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NUCLEAR
Democrats would shield foreign nuclear whistleblowers
Radioactive leak pollutes German river
Radiation Leak Shuts N.Y. Post Office
Hanford fire chief to retire
South African arms dealer faces death over failed coup
World Focus: Legacy of Atomic Age
Banks and Bombs
The Cradle of Devastation
Bush nuke plan may not affect Europe stores
Media reports from Tehran: Latest Iranian missile has upgraded warhead
Kerry would offer Iran a 'great bargain' over nuclear program: Edwards
Edwards Says Kerry Plans to Confront Iran on Weapons
Israeli ministers urged to keep low profile on Iran nuclear issue
TEPCO restarts nuclear power unit after checks
N. Korea, Libya in Possible Nuclear Link
Talking Human Rights With North Korea
Libya Seems Honest About Nuke Program - UN Report
UN Says Libya Earnest on Nukes, But Probes Design
U.N. Can't Define Libya Weapons Program
UN atomic agency praises Libya, but 'critical questions' remain
U.N.: Origin of Libya Nuke Info Unclear
Plenty to worry about
Nuclear plant layoffs revive fatigue fears
MILITARY
Taliban Warns of More Attacks as Kabul Toll Rises
7 Killed in Kabul as Bombing Rips a U.S. Contractor
Darfur Still Troubled as UN Deadline Runs Out
Sudan Asks U.N. for 'Reasonable Decision'
U.N. Official Says Darfur Refugees Still at Risk
Putin lifts ban on Russian arms sales to Iraq
Global Arms Sales Drop Again, Asia Biggest Market
Bush gives defense industry big budget
U.S. and Russia Still Dominate Arms Market, but World Total Falls
Contracts Awarded
Taiwan Cancels War Games, Mirrors China Move -Papers
U.S. Envoy Proposes Shift of Aid to Iraqi Security and Jobs
Iraqi Cleric Calls Cease - fire After Bloody Uprising
Negroponte Wants More Funds for Iraqi Security - - WSJ
Iraqi Premier Meets Militants, Pushes Amnesty
U.S. May Shift Billions for Iraq Security
Talks Go On in Iraq; Aide Says Cleric Asks Fighters to Disarm
Israel planes violate Lebanon air space
Officials worry about effects of spy accusations
Sharon Urges Faster Plan to Leave Settlements
Palestinians Say 800 Prisoners Resume Hunger Strike
Sharon Fails in Bid to Speed Up Gaza Pullout
Israelis Fire Missile at Palestinians
Israel, Iran Trade Threats As FBI Investigates Spying
Gaza Settlement Evacuation Plan Sped Up
Israel Floats Settlement As Hospital Plan
Lebanese Autonomy May Become U.N. Issue
Prison dog use mired in confusion
Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds
Fuel Leak Scrubs Lockheed Atlas Florida Launch
Nest of Spies
And Now a Mole?
Analyst at center of spy flap called naive, ardently pro-Israel
Officials Say Publicity Derailed Secrets Inquiry
Israel Says It Has No Need to Spy on U.S.
Top Officials Briefed on Pentagon Probe
War Making Headlines, but Peace Breaks Out
Hour of the Generals
Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Secret Court Poses Challenges
Fuji Blimp Helps With Convention Security
Army of Police Keep Watch Over Delegates
Stop! And Be Sniffed
Report Faults Hiring of Air Marshals
Army of Police Keep Watch Over Delegates
ICE opens first of five new bases on north border
Secret Court Poses Challenges
With Restraint and New Tactics, March Is Kept Orderly
Vietnam Marks Independence with Pardons for Prisoners
POLITICS
Reed Confirms Fees From Indian Casino Lobbyists
9/11 families split on GOP convention
Florida Voting Under Microscope Again
OTHER
Acidic clouds still drifting from southern Indiana power plant
ACTIVISTS
Undermining free speech
NYC marchers slam Bush
Republican Conventioneers Met By Giant Protest March
200,000 in N.Y. Protest
Poor, Homeless Rally Against Bush in New York
S.Africa Police Fire on Youth Protest, 20 Hurt
400 Arrests as NYPD Unveil New Policing Tactics & Surveillance Methods
Activists Face 25 Years for Hanging Anti-Bush Banner At Plaza Hotel
Critical Mass: Over 260 Arrested in First Major Protest of RNC
Veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas on Iraq:
GOP Convention Protests Mostly Peaceful
Poor, Homeless Rally Against Bush in New York
Vast Anti-Bush Rally Greets Republicans in New York
Thousands Protest Effort to Oust Mayor of Mexico City
Upstaging Before the Show in True New York Fashion
-------- NUCLEAR
Democrats would shield foreign nuclear whistleblowers
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Aug 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040830195917.c2peiezw.html
Democrats in the White House would offer asylum to scientists secretly building illegal nuclear weapons in foreign countries, vice presidential candidate John Edwards said Monday.
"We will send a message to those nuclear scientists: If you want to come clean and expose an illegal weapons program, then we will help you and we will protect you," Edwards said at North Carolina University's Wilmington campus, according to a transcript provided by his campaign.
Edwards said Republican President George W. Bush had not done enough to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
"We will bring the world together to end the nuclear weapons programs in states like North Korea and Iran," he said.
"The administration has stood on the sidelines while they advanced their nuclear programs."
-------- accidents and safety
Radioactive leak pollutes German river
Aug 30, 2004
STUTTGART, Germany (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040830161929.tnlmasx6.html
A radioactive leak at a nuclear power plant in southwest Germany has polluted a tributary of the Rhine river, the regional environmental ministry said here Monday.
The incident happened in late July when the plant underwent an annual check-up, said the ministry in Stuttgart, capital of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The leak at Neckarwestheim released a tiny amount of radioactivity into the Neckar river which flows into the Rhine not far from Heidelberg.
The ministry said the population in the area was not at risk but the leak still raised concern as two similar incidents had been reported from a nuclear power plant in the same region, at Philippsburg, in September 2002 and April
The ministry has asked plant officials at Neckarwestheim to explain why the incident was only reported about a month after it occurred.
----
Radiation Leak Shuts N.Y. Post Office
LUKAS I. ALPERT
Mon, Aug. 30, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/9538509.htm?1c
NEW YORK - A low-level radiation leak from an X-ray camera for a construction project forced the closure of a postal facility and surrounding streets, the health department said Monday.
There was no evidence of a significant health risk. Sunday's closing was done "out of abundance of caution," health officials said.
There were 20 postal employees, but no customers, inside the closed Franklin D. Roosevelt Station when the leak occurred.
The leak occurred as a contractor was using the X-ray camera to make an assessment of piping within the building's loading bays and ramps. A mechanical problem with the camera occurred, and elevated radiation levels were detected, health officials said.
The contractor was doing work for another building tenant, post office spokeswoman Pat McGovern said. She did not know who the contractor or tenant was.
Protective shielding was installed and radiation dropped to normal levels by Monday.
The level of exposure for postal employees was still being determined. It was believed to be below the level at which "measurable health effects may occur," officials said.
The building also houses business offices; it remained closed Monday. Surrounding streets also remained closed to vehicles and nonessential pedestrian traffic.
The building is across the street from the Citigroup Center, which was listed by Department of Homeland Security officials as a possible terrorist target.
----
Hanford fire chief to retire
Monday, August 30th, 2004
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5487721p-5425840c.html
The badge and emblem of the head of the Hanford Fire Department are being retired, not to mention his well-used cell phone and pager.
After 27 years of being on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day, Fire Chief Don Good is retiring.
A parade of Hanford prime contractors, Hanford managers and Department of Energy secretaries have come and gone since 1977, but Good has been a constant at the site.
"He's cool under fire," said Rich Slocum, deputy vice president of Fluor Hanford, the DOE contractor in charge of emergency services. "He never gets frustrated. He's always in command."
As fire chief and director of the Hanford Fire Department, Good has been responsible for emergencies on the 560 square miles of the Hanford nuclear reservation. The 136 fire department workers are spread among four fire stations and one maintenance facility. They respond to about 1,200 calls a year.
In part, his career has been notable for what has not happened.
His department is responsible for fire suppression, emergency medical and ambulance service and specialized rescue. But it's also responsible for fire prevention, including fire hazard analysis and developing the design for fire protection systems in buildings.
As a rookie firefighter at the Rocky Flats nuclear reservation, he helped fight the 1969 plutonium fire that was not only the worst accident in the plant's history, but also one of the most costly industrial accidents in U.S. histories, according to Colorado.
But under Good's watch as Hanford fire chief, the Hanford fire of June 2000 ravaged nearly 200,000 acres in a perfect storm of weather conditions without any major structures destroyed nor any off site radioactive releases from Hanford's hundreds of waste sites. None of the 900 firefighters who responded received radiological contamination, even though the fire was so powerful that flames leaped 20 feet into the air and the fire advanced 20 miles in 90 minutes.
"Unflappable," is how DOE spokeswoman Colleen French described him after the 2000 fire.
"Your actions have consistently demonstrated courage, insight and professionalism in dealing with some of the most dangerous materials known to man, under emergency conditions," wrote Keith Klein, the manager of DOE's Richland operations, in a letter to mark Good's retirement. "The stakes could not have been higher: inaction -- or the wrong actions -- could have resulted in untold damages to workers, the public and our national defense."
Good's decision to become a firefighter was something of a fluke.
With no career goal in mind when he graduated from high school, he joined the military. He left with one bit of advice from his father, a World War II veteran: "You'll be fine. Just don't volunteer."
He followed that advice until a call went out looking for volunteer firefighters. Good couldn't resist. Duties turned out to be shoveling coal into the base furnace.
But after Good finished his service and went to college, he still was thinking about becoming a firefighter -- the kind who put out fires.
He served for almost 14 years at Rocky Flats before coming to Hanford as fire chief.
Here, his influence has spread beyond Hanford to the surrounding fire fighting communities.
He not only was generous in sharing the resources of the Hanford Fire Department, but also has maintained DOE support for service to the public, said Bob Gear, chief of Benton County Fire District 1.
From floods to firefighter funerals, Good was ready to help with Hanford resources, said Kennewick Fire Chief Bob Kirk.
"Don has always been open to looking at different ways of looking at fire service," Kirk said. That's ranged from a joint recruit school with the city of Kennewick to putting together a program of incident management teams to help individual departments in the region in major emergencies, from fires to searches for missing children.
Good says he may do some consulting work after he ends his 40 years of fire and emergency service Tuesday at the age of 62. But mostly he looks forward to having more time for family, including a new grandson, he said.
It's also time to provide someone else the opportunity he had to manage the Hanford Fire Department, he said. Watching young firefighters, male and female, join the service and develop new skills has been one of the most rewarding elements of his career, he said.
He has some advice for his successor, who has yet to be picked.
Listen, Good advised.
That may have something to do with Good's longevity and success with government program that's seen frequent changes in leadership.
He made a point of paying attention to what his workers said and also listening to the wishes of the many contractors, subcontractors and other groups with an interest in Hanford.
"We're going to be at a loss in the community to get someone back in like him," Kirk said. "They don't make them like they used to."
-------- africa
South African arms dealer faces death over failed coup
30 August 2004
independent.co.uk
By Jason Bennetto
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=556463
A South African arms dealer held in Equatorial Guinea for his part in an alleged plot to overthrow the President of the oil-rich state will learn today if he is to be executed.
In an interview published yesterday, Nick du Toit claimed he had talked with Sir Mark Thatcher about buying two military helicopters.
Baroness Thatcher's son and other Britons are accused of plotting with mercenaries and arms dealers to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea in March. They are accused of planning to install an opposition figure, now in exile in Spain, in his place, according to the government and Mr Du Toit. Sir Mark was charged last week in South Africa with financing the enterprise.
Mr Du Toit, speaking from prison in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, told The Mail on Sunday he was introduced to Sir Mark by Simon Mann, another arms dealer. Mann, a former SAS officer, was convicted in Zimbabwe last week of attempting to buy arms for the coup. The former Etonian pleaded guilty to trying to obtain weapons.
"I met him [Sir Mark] about four times over the past seven years. The arms dealer world is small and we all know each other. Simon told me he was one of us.
"I had talks with Thatcher about 18 months ago when he wanted to buy two military helicopters for the logistic support for a gold mine he said he owns in Sudan. I had helicopters under repair in Zambia and invited them to go there and inspect them. In the end, we didn't do a deal that often happens in my business but Thatcher talked to me at length about arms and protection practices in Africa."
Mr Du Toit said he never discussed the coup plot with Sir Mark, but admitted he had met others at Johannesburg airport in South Africa last July, the same time as the overthrow plan was being discussed.
Mr Du Toit, a former member of South Africa's special forces, said his role in the plot would have been to set up roadblocks and enable the main body of mercenaries to get to the presidential palace. His reward, he said, was to be $1m (£560,000) and a job as head of the newly installed presidential guard
But he said he received a call from Mann telling him the coup was off while he was stationed with his men in vehicles at Malabo airport waiting for weapons to arrive. The day after the coup was cancelled, President Obiang arrested all foreigners and confiscated their passports.
Mr Du Toit is among 14 men currently on trial in Malabo for the attempted coup. "We've been abandoned by all the big players behind the coup plot," he said.
"I've worked on missions before on a need to know where all the funds have come from or who is involved. But there's always an understanding that if trouble happens they will find lawyers and other help. We're in terrible trouble and that help isn't coming," he said.
President Obiang, the ruler of a tiny country that is also one of the largest African producers of oil, said his judges would decide the plotters' fate. "But if I were to be the judge, I would apply the maximum penalty execution by firing squad," he said.
The Equatorial Guinea prosecutors have asked South Africa for permission to question Sir Mark, who denies any part in the alleged conspiracy. He has been released on 2m rand (£165,000) bail and has been banned from leaving Cape Town.
Sixty-six men arrested with Mann during the alleged coup plot were freed after magistrates in Harare decided the prosecution had failed to prove they had knowingly taken part in a military mission. Two of those men, Harry Carlse and Lourens Horn, now claim they were tortured in prison. Horn said he was stripped naked, beaten and threatened with electrocution during his interrogation. Both claimed they were ill-fed and denied water.
-------- asia
World Focus: Legacy of Atomic Age
Nuclear fuel focus of dispute Talks between Kazakhstan, U.S. over leftover plutonium have stalled
Aug 30, 2004
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031777614673
MANGYSTAU, Kazakhstan In a storage pool at a mothballed nuclear-power plant on the shores of the Caspian Sea rests a key ingredient for anyone seeking to build a nuclear weapon: Containers of spent atomic fuel with enough plutonium to make dozens of bombs.
Despite international concern about the waste at the Mangyshlak nuclear-power plant, plans to transport it away from the Caspian shore have stalled in a dispute between Kazakhstan and the United States over where and how it should be removed.
Kazakhstan has earned much international good will for unilaterally disarming after the 1991 Soviet collapse and handing over its nuclear arsenal to Russia under watch of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Still, the nation's atomic legacy as a testing ground for the Soviet nuclear program has left it with numerous waste sites, as well as the remnants of an active atomic-power program.
The Mangyshlak Atomic Energy Complex is one of those places, lying in a decrepit industrial area outside the city of Aktau in the moonlike desolation of western Kazakhstan. The reactor was shut down in 2003 for economic reasons, having worked a decade beyond its intended 20-year lifetime.
The 330 tons of spent nuclear fuel contain more than 3 tons of plutonium enriched to more than 90 percent. That's better than usual weapons-grade but would require extensive processing to be made into bombs.
The fuel has been cooling for so long and was so lightly irradiated to begin with that it is no longer radioactive enough to be "self-protecting" against theft, according to the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, an anti-proliferation organization.
"Thieves could load it into a boat and take it away without necessarily receiving radiation doses that would immediately be incapacitating," the NTI wrote on its Web site.
Kazakhstan is one of five countries sharing the Caspian Sea with Iran, which is suspected of seeking nuclear weapons. Iranian cargo ships sail by regularly, and the NTI notes that Tehran has shown interest in Aktau and has talked of opening a consulate there.
The United States has provided military assistance to bolster Kazakhstan's shore defenses and plans to give $20 million for new radars and intercept boats.
The Kazakhs want U.S. help in a $40 million project to move the spent fuel to a safer site, but those efforts are deadlocked. The Kazakhs want to take the fuel to Semipalatinsk, the former nuclear-weapons test site in eastern Kazakhstan.
But the United States wants it shipped to Russia, where other radioactive materials were sent.
The Kazakhs planned to build single-use casks to transport the waste and then store it in reinforced underground bunkers. But the United States persuaded them to use dual-use casks in which the fuel can be both transported and stored.
However, work on the dual-use casks is on hold, and the Kazakhs continue to work on single-use casks.
"No work is being done on the dual-use casks because no funding is coming from the United States. And we cannot understand why," said Irina Tajibayeva, executive director of the Kazakhstan government's Center for the Safety of Nuclear Technologies.
"This is not an example of good cooperation."
The U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan declined several requests for comment in recent weeks.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, "We are fully aware of the status of the discussion between Kazakhstan and the United States, and materials are currently properly under IAEA safeguards."
The plant's director, Gennady Pugachev, insisted that "fears that our nuclear fuel could get into the wrong hands are groundless."
"We are not North Korea, where there is no government will to make [nuclear materials] safe," said Viktor Martyshkin, the reactor's information security chief. "Our government wants to make sure these materials do not get into some mad, criminal hands."
-------- depleted uranium
Banks and Bombs
2004-08-30
UN Observer
http://www.unobserver.com/printen.php?id=1900
Research by the Belgian NGO Netwerk Vlaanderen reveals that European banks such as Axa, Dexia, Fortis, ING and KBC invest in controversial weapons systems - including cluster bombs, anti personnel mines, nuclear and uranium weapons.
In October 2003, Netwerk Vlaanderen and its partners in the Belgian peace movement released their first report as part of the campaign "My Money. Clear Conscience?". This report revealed that the five largest banks in Belgium (Axa, Dexia, Fortis, ING and KBC) maintain a combined investment of $1.5 billion in 11 international weapons producing companies. Netwerk Vlaanderen is now bringing new facts to light in a second report. This report focuses on the links between the same five bank groups and the production of controversial weapon systems such as landmines, cluster bombs, nuclear weapons and uranium weapons.
The report reveals that AXA holds shares (6.6%) in ATK, a producer of cluster bombs, and weapons with depleted uranium. Artesia Bank, a subsidiary of the Dexia group, has given bank guarantees worth $1.9 million to Forges De Zeebrugge, a Belgian company that develops, produces and tests missile systems, including cluster bombs and cluster munitions. Fortis Bank, too, has given bank guarantees to Forges De Zeebrugge, worth $900,000 and $137,000. (Please click photo for full size poster and then continue ...)
As part of an international banking syndicate, ING has given a credit facility of up to $100 million to EADS, a European producer of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs, amongst other things. All of the above banks offer two investment funds on the Belgian market that invest in Singapore Technologies Engineering, a producer of anti-personnel mines. Download the full report: Financial links between banks and the producers of controversial weapon systems.
http://www.risq.org/modules/Upload/banking.pdf Netwerk Vlaanderen http://www.netwerk-vlaanderen.be Also, new at the website of the International Coalition of Uranium Weapons (ICBUW): Four new factsheets (by Lizzy Bloem) in the series From uranium in nature to uranium weapons http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=14
3 The Bijlmer crash or the cover-up of a chemical inferno (by Lizzy Bloem) http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=140 Dossier 'Bijlmer Disaster' - Annotated links to web resources on the El Al plane crash in Amsterdam, 1992.
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=viewlink&cid=12 (in Dutch/Flemish) Belgen werden doodziek van vredesmissies in Kosovo
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=14
1 For more information, please contact: Maarten H.J. van den Berg Board Member and Public Relations Officer International Coalition of Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) vandenberg@risq.org Republished in conjunction with Review of International Social Questions (RISQ) http://www.risq.org Poster courtesy of the World Uranium Weapons Conference http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de
----
The Cradle of Devastation
by Manuel Valenzuela
Monday 30th August 2004
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_11186.shtml
Gunboat soldiers of wars past and brutal, bitter at the truths spoken thirty years ago, have taken us back to bloody deltas and haunting demons, purposefully smearing one man and making an entire nation relive memories still too fragile to exorcise from the collective mind of the American people. Traversing waters of painful history so that we ignore the now toxic waterways of the Tigris and Euphrates, tools of proxy and pawns of convenience have only succeeded in reminding us of the putrid morality and dishonor residing in mansions old and white that have and continue to stain the once bright American beacon of light.
Taking us back to the jungles of Vietnam so that we can forget the present debacle in the deserts of Iraq, gunboat soldiers and their puppeteers wish to deviate an amnesia-riddled populace from the lands of the once Fertile Crescent, manipulating our short-attention span away from a foreign policy blunder more and more resembling a cocktail offering equal opportunity to an amalgam of failure, including a massive debacle, quagmire, catastrophe and collapse rolled into one.
Iraq is on the verge of implosion, a pussing scab never to heal, forever to pain America through the salts of bitterness and the unyielding defeat of failure. The inevitability of failure cannot be denied nor can it be questioned. It is only a matter of when, not if, as alien lands and divergent peoples resist and revolt imperial armies and crusading delusions. How can the sinister intentions of the few, nothing more than a malignant cluster of miscreants at the top, bring down a nation of so much splendor and potential, belonging to the total spectrum of humanity, not just the sewers of the elite?
Trapped in the sand dunes of Mesopotamia the American dream has awoken to, unable to extricate one soldier from an occupation besmirched by the leadership of George W. Bush and his neocon vultures. Condemned soldiers of misfortune find themselves in, their caste of indigence and lack of opportunity helping seal their fates, fighting and dying for mistakes, furthering the power trips of the elite, suffering through the indifference of their anointed leaders and sacrificing for the welfare of another nation. How many more will have to die or have their extremities ripped apart for a mistake and a fight sought by few to the detriment of the many? How many more sons and daughters will we have to bury, when the world entire smells the decaying smell of failure and sees the maggots prospering in our carcass?
Something has gone terribly wrong when the same people you are claiming to have liberated, showering them with the mirages of American freedom and democracy, exhibit nothing but animosity and hostility toward you. Such is the situation in Iraq, vividly exhibited by members of the Iraqi Olympic Soccer Team, who echo the sentiments of the vast majority of their countrymen. To understand the comments emanated, with the strong emotions and powerful words used, Americans must see themselves through the eyes of Iraqis. We must empathize with and place ourselves inside their lands and cities and homes. Only then will we understand why members of Iraq's soccer team, like so many of their fellow citizens, feel the way they do, spouting bitterness and animosity towards the devastation enveloping their nation, and why the debacle that George W. Bush and the neocons have created will inevitably be doomed to fail.
The question thus becomes how many more American soldiers and Iraqi citizens need to die for a mistake? How much more suffering, death, destruction and human evil, both here and in Iraq, needs to arise from the rotting flesh of a minute cabal of lunatics that took two nations to war and hundreds of millions of people towards division, hatred and perpetual conflict? Who will be the last person to die for the mistake of an inept and ignoramus leader? How much more human energy need be extinguished until the people of America have their insatiable hunger for conflict, revenge and blood satisfied?
Yet statements such as those made by members of the Iraqi Olympic soccer team will never be disseminated to the American people who continue to be trapped in the quicksand of propaganda and mass manipulation delivered by a complicit corporate media loyal only to its parent companies and the government they own. Once more, it seems, the truth of what the Iraq debacle is will be sequestered, never to see the light of day and forever to be altered so the masses remain clueless to the implosion about to befall the American occupation of Iraq.
Iraq has become a phantom that is not seen, lingering in our midst yet invisible to the conscious. The intensity of guerilla war and the devastating attacks by Iraqi freedom fighters and the resistance routinely go unnoticed, instead only making a ten second sound bite proclaiming the death of dozens of dead-enders, thugs, Baathist remnants and foreign fighters. It seems the reality of who it is American troops are fighting cannot be blurted out since it was our forefathers who waged the same kind of war for Independence more than 225 years ago. We would not want to call the Founding Fathers and their army of patriots 'terrorists,' would we?
The fact is we have become the occupiers, the Red Coats exploiting and subjugating the Iraqi people, and today their George Washington's, their patriots and minutemen are waging battles to rid their lands of us. And so the nonsense about bringing 'freedom and democracy' to Iraq fails to disappear as straight-faced journalists and anchors who know better continue disseminating lies that mask a truth that can never be uncovered. Because if we are today's Red Coats, and Iraqi freedom fighters are yesterday's American Revolution, wouldn't that make us the bad guys, nothing more than imperial thugs seeking out world conquest for natural resources and human exploitation? Would not invaders and occupiers lose all altitude in the moral high ground, waging war and destroying an entire society so that the thirst for black blood can be quenched and the geo-strategic goal of empire building satisfied?
The Bush administration would rather distort the success of the soccer team in its favor, politicizing and spinning its triumph of the human spirit, like it does everything else, airing an advertisement exploiting those that despise what it has unleashed, even while team members openly condemn what the occupation has done. The administration, with its legions of spinmeisters, professional liars, propagandists, manipulators and marketers is also doing everything in its power to muzzle the truth from ever escaping the deserts of Mesopotamia. Iraq is such a mess, such a cesspool of chaos that any news coming out of there inevitably damages a president whose sole preoccupation is how best to politicize, spin, connive, lie and corrupt himself and his pack of wolves back into office.
With an occupation that resembles the very real and frightening nightmares we desperately seek to wake from and never experience again, with every decision made only succeeding to make volatile an already highly flammable situation, the question must be asked if American foreign policy knows what it is doing, both to the present populace and the future to come. Every action leads to reaction, every cause has its effect, and just as butterflies flap their wings, typhoons of rampage can we expect. What is our purpose in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates? Who is the greatest beneficiary in this failed experiment? Why did we invade, based on lies and deceptions? For what reason must so many, on both sides, keep dying and getting injured, forever to be maimed, if not in body then in soul?
The need to preserve in the American mind the illusion of American grandeur and the façade of the occupation's noble intentions prevents the corporate media and its minions from reporting the gravity of the situation. The very idea of America the Beautiful must remain intact; the illusion of bringing freedom and democracy to 'barbarians' must be made to persevere. For if the truth of what America and its military have done to Iraq and its people is ever made known, mirages of grandeur and virtue would vanish like a morning fog, and the dream of America as the enabler of liberty, human rights and worldwide peace and harmony would come crashing down with the force of ten thousand Tomahawk missiles raining from the sky above.
The American people would see that our government is not what it portends to be. We would finally see the devastation upon land and man that the greatest military machine unleashes in the name of freedom and democracy. We would see our soldiers winning the battles but losing the war, losing their humanity amidst the growing hatred of the Iraqi people. One step forward and one-hundred back, the United States' only success is in exporting death and importing shame, in bringing misery and returning bodies devoid of energy. It has only achieved the monumental rage now boiling in Iraq and the Middle East that only grows and that will last entire generations, forever condemning our presence in their lands and infiltration into their affairs.
If allowed to see truth, we would finally be privy to the images denied us for decades, of third-world countries decimated and poisoned, their people slaughtered and laid to waste, rotting among cesspools of misery and mechanisms of slavery. Destroyed homes, cratered cities, unending cemeteries and children playing in raw sewage would only begin to erode the blinders that have for too long hidden us from a world devastated by our government's foreign policies and military interventions. What our eyes have never been allowed to see would finally blind us in shame.
Hospitals lacking medicines, the infirm dying, doctors who can no longer use their ability to save condemned 'collateral damage' and a healthcare system in shambles might finally open our minds to the evils our government does in our name. Malnourished children, bloated babies, all with lower immune systems and all with severe mental deficiencies that have and continue to foster stunted intelligence thanks to a decade of economic genocide imposed by the US continue to suffer. Those sanctions, you may recall, left over one million Iraqis dead, over half of them children.
Genocide by clandestine economic depravity is still genocide, under the name of sanctions or under the rubric of containment of one man. One man for one million deaths plus the destruction and impoverishment of a once flourishing society is a formula created by sinister men and only understood by the malevolent that walk among us. All in a day's work for a government we trust and military we cherish, both of which unleashed the fires of hell on a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 or the so-called fiction labeled the 'war on terror'. And we wonder why they hate us?
In this present imperial exercise in futility for natural resources, strategic base construction and war by proxy, anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 innocent Iraqi deaths and hundreds of thousands of severe injuries have been estimated thanks to America's invasion and subsequent occupation. Given that the population of the nation is 25 million, this is an alarming number, signifying a huge percentage of the population. The United States, on the other hand, lost 3000 energies on 9/11, out of a population of 285 million. What we have done to Iraq pales in comparison to the World Trade Center, in essence superceding 9/11 on a magnitude 1000 times worse, reaching titanic proportions of death, destruction and incredible and ongoing suffering. So much suffering for a nation 9/11-innocent and WMD free, so many monstrosities created to enrich the military industrial complex and the Corporate Leviathan.
Crimes against humanity have been omnipresent, thanks to the human evil festering in Washington and a complicit media whose failures betray its motives. The warmonger junta and its minions belong at The Hague, or better, Texas' death row. For the Iraqis, unlike America, their 9/11 still festers, never healing or dissipating, continuing to murder, contaminate and decimate on a daily basis, each day becoming greater in scale as the terrorist invasion and occupation upon their nation continues to send them further down the sewer of eternal damnation. Their nation and society will take generations to recover; their hatred of America may never erode.
The devastation has been so severe, and the destruction of an entire society so systemic, that to awaken the fiction-living, bubble-inhabiting, fantasy-aspiring, chemically-altered, stupor-existing, pill-popping American mind from its catatonically endemic state with the unfiltered truth of the wasteland created in Iraq would send shockwaves through our brainwashed and acquiescent society. We have been led to believe in victory, in altruism and the exportation of the American way of life abroad. Deceived we have been conditioned to think all is well in Iraq, that the occupation is only temporary, just as long as is needed to 'stay the course', and that only a few bumps in the road are in the way of instilling freedom and democracy on a people ever-thankful for their liberty.
Through the manipulations of both the media and the Bush administration the charade that is the Prime Minister and the Interim government breathes life, gorging on our naïve belief that sovereignty has been passed. Never mind that 140,000 American troops remain, going from holy city to holy city to unearth the seeds of Armageddon from the embittered population. Never mind that the Iraqi economy has been privatized to serve American corporate interests, that democracy is another term for crony capitalism and that 'advisers' sit at every ministry, becoming the overlords of the Iraqi government. Never mind that oil revenues are being pilfered, that it is being usurped by American oil conglomerates and that much needed profits are going not to the people of Iraq but to Bush cronies, contributors and profiteers.
The biggest scam in the history of the world is taking place, with Iraqi oil that should belong to Iraqis disappearing, its revenues enriching American interests, while only two percent of $18 billion in reconstruction money has been spent. Where, then, is all this remaining money? Where is the much marketed reconstruction of Iraq, meant to alleviate the painful life of the average Iraqi citizen? Where are the schools, the medicines and the improved infrastructure? Where are the electricity and the security once promised but yet to be delivered? The trail of sorrow, the trail of corruption and of highway robbery begins with Halliburton and others like it, nothing but fronts to the greatest misappropriation of American taxpayer funds and Iraqi oil revenues ever devised. The criminals in office, through their abuse of power, are orchestrating the complete looting of the American treasury, giving our hard earned wages to the American and Israeli military industrial complexes and the Corporate Leviathan.
Getting rich has never been this easy, and, with an unquestioning and indifferent American public who refuses to ask for transparency or accountability, the pilferage of their taxes will likely persist and the evisceration of education, healthcare and social services gutted.
Officially, the one-thousandth soldier has now died, his 'transfer tube' clandestinely sneaked back under cover of warm darkness and cold indifference, surpassing a barrier few ever thought reachable. Thanks to Kevlar vests, 6,500 can claim to be alive, though forever destined to live with the demons of missing appendages, seared bodies and tortured souls. Unofficially, however, the tally of dead and injured is much higher, easily pro-rated by the day or week through the macabre accounting schemes of the same criminals sponsored by Enron and at the helm of Halliburton. The American public, after all, naively believes every distortion and propaganda spewed by the Department of War, even when the first casualty of war is the truth and when deception is part of and indeed a major tool of war. Can we possibly imagine the same administration that lied to us into war, concocting bogus and sexed up intelligence, that has not once told the American people the truth about anything it has ever done and whose president can be psychoanalyzed as a compulsive liar would ever tell us the truth about deaths and injuries? Hiding bodies under cover of sky lit night and sneaking the maimed and burned under the radar should be proof enough that our men and women are getting slaughtered and torn to shreds in Iraq.
When there has been a pattern of incessant lies coming from the Pentagon and White House, at the same time that a barrage of propaganda streams into our conscious, it seems unbelievable American citizens take the word of their government as if descended from the heavens above. Perhaps ingrained in each of us is the belief that governments are altruistic entities with our best interests as their main focus. Maybe it is denial that leads us to trust what cannot be trusted, a refusal to acknowledge that we are being used and taken advantage of.
In the end, it is possible that we do not want to learn the truth for fear of what it might divulge, awakening us to the failure and chaos, the unrelenting guerilla war that will never subside and whose tenacity will only escalate, the incessant war crimes being committed in our name and the proposition that America will lose yet again to a "third-world, rag-tag, decrepit waste of a nation." It is pride that bites the most, and it could help explain why the vast majority of us would rather dwell in the fields grazing like sheep, seeking to be led by our shepherds in government, wanting no part in escaping the fiction we have been living for so long.
History, for those who heed its lessons, is against the occupying forces who invade another people's land. When history repeats itself, as it is now, it is because those who sought what could never be achieved failed to learn or understand the codes of human mistakes littered within the verses of man's short recorded time. The sands of time were not consulted, and the price of ignorance are we today suffering. Man does not change over short periods of time; indeed, mentally our brains and bodies haven't for hundreds of thousands of years. We are prevented from rapid leaps of change by the inertia of evolution, both mental and physical. The same creature of violence, territorial competition, instinct of survival (selfishness), hierarchy, sexual drive, and animal passions and emotions resides inside us. Is it any wonder war, death, violence and destruction are endemic in our collective history and civilization, regardless of which corner of the globe we reside from, as common in humanity as the television and movies we watch, saturated to the brim with images and plots mirroring the symptoms of our disease?
The devastation of the Cradle of Civilization is but the latest resurrection of the virus we cannot purge from our human nature. And it will not be the last, for it will continue as long as we fail to realize the reality of who and what we truly are.
Lingering in the sands and air of Iraq are remnants of the malevolence of human evil. The nation whose rivers Tigris and Euphrates helped spawn human civilization has been poisoned by toxins so deadly and disease-ridden that it will take billions of years to once more be cleansed. Thousands of tons of Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions have been used by the US military in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, not to mention in Gulf War I also. The equivalent of thousands of Hiroshimas has been unleashed upon the peoples of Mesopotamia, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of US soldiers as well. Depleted Uranium is radiation, overwhelmingly dangerous, and enormous amounts of it now taint the environs of Iraq. As a result, cancers, leukemia and pandemics of disease have increased exponentially, only to grow more pronounced in the coming years and decades. Child deformities that have never been witnessed are now commonplace, so grotesque are the babies born to send chills down one's spine. The genetic code and DNA sequence of Iraqis is being destroyed, mutating due to the radiation in the air, the ground, the water and the food. The United States has unleashed nuclear war onto millions of innocent people.
This devastation cannot be seen on television or read in newspapers, it will never be mentioned by a government intent on covering up the greatest mass genocide in history. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, are dead men, women and children walking, waiting for America's radiation, the ultimate WMD, to strike them down with one disease or another. Entire generations of children will be born deformed or with mutated genetic codes. Deformities in newborns will continue to rise, becoming prevalent with the passage of time. Iraqis have been poisoned, just as Vietnamese once were (toxic defoliating chemicals) and continue to be. They have been sentenced to death and perpetual misery thanks to the murderers in Washington, the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.
And if you think they do not know what they have unleashed or what is transpiring, think again. Once more, our government covers up what it does not want the masses to know. One of the most devastating implications of DU is the fact that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have been exposed to the radiation emanating from the same bombs, munitions, bullets and artillery they have fired. What is happening to Iraqi civilians can also be seen in the men and women of Gulf Wars I and II. Already, 11,000 veterans of Gulf War I have died, most of them in the prime of their lives, and over half of those who served, about 325,000 out of 580,400, suffer various medical ailments related to their time in the Middle East. The same symptoms are starting to be seen with military personnel returning home from Iraq. Child deformities, cancers, disease, premature death and ceaseless pain and suffering are the sacrifice America's soldiers and new veterans must endure to do the dirty work of the elite in government and those who run the vast military-industrial complex.
Once again, however, the corporate media refuses to do its job. It refuses to inform the American public or to report the truth of the devastation that our government and military have condemned Iraq and its people with. It fails yet again to report the betrayal of American soldiers by their government, many of whom have been sentenced to death by their exposure to DU. Our corporate media serves no truth telling purpose. On the contrary, its only role is to disseminate propaganda and lies, manipulations and brainwashing material. It hides a reality we are not supposed to see, distracting us with brainless fiction and purposefully guiding us down the wrong path so that lost we remain inside forests of disinformation and ignorance. The system is at work, and its great accomplishment can be seen in the total control of the dumbed-down, worker-bee, short-term memory, amnesia-laden, ignorant-conditioned and apathetically-subservient creature called the average American citizen.
In worlds once teeming with happiness and vibrancy disease now prospers. In rivers that once birthed life only sewage and toxins now flow. The Cradle of Civilization is now the Cradle of Devastation; its deserts glow with radiation, not human warmth; its cities crawling with trash, not commerce; its oil is disappearing into the pockets of westerners, not transferred to the purses of breadwinners; its economy has been neo-liberalized and privatized, assuring market colonization and economic strangulation; untold thousands have died and many more have yet to perish, their children now born mutants and deformed creatures fated by human evil; occupation will last years, if not decades, tormenting Iraqi society every second of every day; guerilla war has been reincarnated, sure to outlast the invading army.
The inevitable failure continues and the futility of persisting will only exacerbate the loss of life, limb and mind. The defeat of military might is already assured while winning battles yet losing the war. History does not lie, nor does the strength of the human spirit. Freedom fighters, the resistance and Iraqi patriots will not relent, they will not stop fighting until the last group of American combat boots leaves the sand-filled ground they love. Their land has been invaded, exploited, occupied and robbed. Their people have been humiliated, carpet bombed, raped and dehumanized. Their holy cities have been destroyed through the sacrilege of bombs and bullets. Entire neighborhoods have been made to vanish, tens of thousands now lie buried.
Human history and nature does not deceive, it does not manipulate and it certainly does not lie. The path has been forged for millennia, leading to constant battles for freedom and wars for sovereignty. Those invaded and occupied never stop against those thinking themselves overlords of alien lands, peoples and resources. The human spirit never alters, from the dawn of time, it refuses to be conquered. Iraq is no different, and is why through the study of history we can see the inevitable failure and defeat of the United States.
It is already happening, and it will only continue, snowballing until ego-driven leaders see the fallacy of their power trip and the corrosiveness of their mistakes. Until then, the prolonged march of death down the road of perdition will go on, killing, maiming and destroying minds, forever scarring lives and futures.
Who will be the last man or woman to die for a mistake? Who will be the last to die for the ineptitude of leadership and the corruption of morality of those at the top? We can stay the course and thousands more can be killed, thousands more can be maimed in body and mind, and thousands more mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, wives and husbands can forever mourn the death of their loved ones. Or we can learn from history, learn from our mistakes, see the writing on the wall and get the hell out of the debacle that Bush and the neocons have manufactured.
The cause is lost, the war has been determined and the inevitability that is American defeat now lingers in the air we breathe, becoming the foul odor penetrating our lungs. We can get out, saving thousands of lives on both sides, moving on with our lives, preventing the blowback that is sure to come, or we can remain, thinking in our omnipotence and our pride, thinking of fake freedom and democracy, in our macho chest-thumping that victory is near, and slowly but surely becoming entangled in a battle extending its cruel tentacles outside the borders of Iraq from which our world may never return. Thousands more will die, thousands more will suffer and the great American Empire will come tumbling down.
The choice is up to us. It is up to America. Remember history and its many lessons, for in it can the mistakes and errors of man be deciphered. Remember the lasting images of the last days of Vietnam, and the 58,000 Americans and millions of native inhabitants who lost their energies in a war of madness. Watch The Battle of Algiers (1965), a great and educational movie about the colonization of Algeria by the French and the urban guerilla warfare that followed. Focus your attention to Chechnya and Palestine, for that is what Iraq is to become if America stays. Gaze upon human nature, and realize the inevitable war of attrition that is to come by freedom fighters against American soldiers who are trapped in an unending vicious circle of devastation not of their own making.
Only the people can act, for those in government will not, for they care not an ounce for you or I or the hundreds of thousands of cannon fodder soldiers now risking life and limb that call urban and rural communities home. They are but pawns in the game of power and control, mere expendable grunts doing the military-industrial complex's dirty work. Those sitting pretty in houses old and white and in the bordello called Congress would rather your son or daughter die than declare that a mistake has been made and a debacle is taking place. Those that represent and those that we elect are cowards, some of the most immoral and dishonorable people to walk the green grasses of Earth. They will do nothing, and so we must.
Upon the radiation-filled deserts of Babylon can the ruins of invaders past be seen. In the streets and faces of Iraq the truth is hidden. Like a giant maze that must be traversed and understood reality awaits. From the mouths of soccer players can the writing on the wall be seen. Who will be the last person to die for a mistake? The cradle of devastation eagerly awaits our reply.
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam [Iraq]?..How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
John Kerry, 1971
"How will he [Bush] meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes... I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?...Everyone [in Falluja] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies.
Ahmad Manajid, Iraqi Olympic Soccer Team Member
"My problems are not with the American people...They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"
Adnan Hamad, Iraqi Olympic Soccer Team Member
"We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away."
Salih Sadir, Iraqi Olympic Soccer Team Member and team leader
"You cannot speak about a team that represents freedom. We do not have freedom in Iraq, we have an occupying force. This is one of our most miserable times....Freedom is just a word for the media. We are living in hard times, under occupation."
-------- europe
Bush nuke plan may not affect Europe stores
By Ron Jensen,
Stars and Stripes European edition,
Monday, August 30, 2004
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=23249&archive=true
The Bush administration plans to cut by nearly half America's nuclear warhead stockpile, a result of the Moscow Treaty of 2002 reducing deployed nuclear forces, according to a report to be published in the September/October edition of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
But one of the authors of the article said the nuclear arsenal kept on European soil is not going anywhere.
"Right now, I assume those weapons are staying, at least in the short term," said Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, an environmental watchdog group from Washington, D.C.
Norris and Hans M. Kristensen - who are on the NRDC nuclear issues staff - wrote the article, in which they say the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, submitted a classified report to Congress on June 1 outlining the administration's plans to reduce the number of nuclear warheads, Norris said in a telephone interview last week.
An unclassified letter to Congress from the NNSA that accompanied the report says the stockpile reduction is possible because the Moscow Treaty will reduce the nation's deployed force of nuclear weapons to the lowest level in decades by 2012. The treaty requires a reduction of those weapons to no more than 2,200 by that date. A reduction in deployed weapons makes possible a reduction in the stockpile, which supports the deployed force, the letter says.
Details of the NNSA report were not provided to the authors, but Norris and Kristensen used declassified material to estimate that the United States has about 10,350 warheads in the stockpile and plans to cut about 4,300 of them, or 42 percent.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been tracking nuclear weapon development by the United States and other countries for 60 years.
Norris and Kristensen claim that America has 480 warheads stored in six countries in Europe, including Turkey. Most of them - 130 - are at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, they say. RAF Lakenheath, England, is home to 110, they said.
They said others are stored at Klein Brogel Air Base, Belgium; Buchel Air Base, Germany; Aviano Air Base and Ghedi Air Base, Italy; Volkel Air Base, the Netherlands; and Incirlik Air Base, Turkey.
The U.S. European Command said Thursday the locations and numbers of nuclear weapons are classified. But those sites also appear in publications from other organizations that follow nuclear weapon development, including the Italian Union of Scientists for Disarmament and various anti-nuclear groups in Europe and America.
A EUCOM spokesman in Stuttgart, Germany, told Stars and Stripes that NATO considers nuclear weapons "an essential political and military link between the European and North American members of the alliance."
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rick Haupt said, "The alliance will, therefore, maintain adequate nuclear forces in Europe."
He said their numbers would be at "the minimum level to maintain peace and stability."
"The U.S. remains committed to NATO's strategic concept and will continue to support it, along with its allies," he said.
Hopes were raised in the European anti-nuclear crowd a few months ago when Gen. James L. Jones, EUCOM commander and supreme allied commander in Europe for NATO, told a Belgian senate committee that U.S. nuclear weapons would be reduced in Europe.
"The reduction will be significant. Good news is on the way," Jones told the committee in March, according to La Libre Belgique, a newspaper.
Pol D'Huyvetter, a spokesman for a Belgian anti-nuclear group known as For Mother Earth, said, "That [newspaper article] appeared even on the Web site of SHAPE for a few days and then - whoosh! - it was gone."
However, it had already been picked up by anti-nuclear Web sites and raised expectations for a further announcement.
"I was expecting a follow-up then, but it didn't happen," said Norris.
America has maintained nuclear weapons in western Europe since the 1950s as part of its Cold War strategy to counter the threat of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe. At the height of the Cold War, thousands of nuclear warheads were placed in Europe, according to reports from various groups.
Treaties with the Soviets prompted a reduction of weapons even before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and further reductions have taken place since.
Their presence over the years sparked the growth of a European anti-nuclear movement that survives to this day, still pushing for elimination of American nuclear weapons from Europe. The United States is the only country to deploy nuclear weapons outside its border.
Activists remain pessimistic that their goal will be met anytime soon, even with the announcement of possible troop withdrawals from Europe. D'Huyvetter said, "We think the withdrawal of U.S. troops is the right signal, but we don't see that as related [to reducing nuclear weapons]."
"We've discussed that," said Roland Blach of the German group Nonviolent Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
"So far, I have not much hope. I think the nuclear weapons will be here for another five or 10 or 15 years."
Davida Higgin, an American who created Lakenheath Action Group to campaign for the removal of nuclear weapons from RAF Lakenheath, said: "We would be very glad if the bombs we firmly believe are there were taken away."
But, she added, her worry is that they would be replaced with "mininukes," a new generation of weapon being developed by America.
The purpose of maintaining a nuclear stockpile in Europe escaped the anti-nuke people. Blach called it "really stupid" and D'Huyvetter said the reason was "a mystery."
Norris said, "I think it would be a wise move to bring them home."
-------- iran
Media reports from Tehran: Latest Iranian missile has upgraded warhead
By Ze'ev Schiff,
Haaretz Correspondent
Mon., August 30, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/470859.html
The warhead of the Iranian Shihab-3 missile has been considerably upgraded, according to photographs published in Iranian newspapers of test launches three weeks ago. It is believed that the improvements will permit slower entry into the atmosphere so the warhead, which may be chemical in nature, will be more durable and its contents will be better protected. It is also believed that the missile's range has been extended.
The operational and technological conclusions from the changes in the missile indicate that the Iranians are not resting on their laurels in developing their surface-to-surface missiles, and have shown a daring approach to their technological planning.
Overseas assistance
It is very likely that the Iranians are being assisted by foreign experts from the former Soviet Union hired by Iran under personal contracts, or by experts from North Korea.
It is also likely that the Iranian effort is not limited to the Shihab-3, which has a range of about 1,300 kilometers, but also to the Shihab 4, planned with a range of 2,000 kilometers or more.
At present the Shihab-3 can already come within range of Turkey, which is a member of NATO, as well as most Saudi Arabian cities and oil fields. On the last test of the Shihab-3 on August 11, the missile did not pass the maximum trajectory that had been determined for it.
The Iranians gave the experimental launch extensive media coverage, stressing that the test was a response to an Israeli experimental launch of the Arrow missile, which intercepted a Scud missile in the U.S. at the end of July.
It subsequently turned out that the reported success of the Shihab's launch was intended to camouflage a failure in the missile's flight early in the launch.
New details
However the photographs published by the Iranians show several new details. In addition to the new warhead, the missile was fired from an operational vehicle and not from an ordinary surface launcher. In all the other Shihab-3 tests, the warhead was cone-shaped, but this time it has a new, flatter shape and appears to have various short wings.
Experts from various countries are expected to analyze the technological and operational aspects of the new form of the Shihab-3. It is especially interesting to several European countries, which understand that the day is not far when Iranian missiles will be within range of a considerable portion of Europe.
----
Kerry would offer Iran a 'great bargain' over nuclear program: Edwards
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Aug 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040830173501.5iq1dlwi.html
Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry would offer Iran a "great bargain" over its controversial nuclear program if he were to win the presidency, Kerry's vice presidential running mate, John Edwards, said in a newspaper interview published Monday.
Under Kerry's proposal, Washington would lift its objections over Tehran's construction of nuclear power plants for civilian use if Iran agreed to abandon its efforts to keep nuclear fuel that can be used to make weapons, Edwards told The Washington Post.
If the Islamic republic rejected the terms of Kerry's offer, the United States would consider it a confirmation of Tehran's nuclear bomb ambitions, he said. The United States would call on European allies to impose heavy sanctions on Iran if it failed to comply.
"If we are engaging with Iranians in an effort to reach this great bargain, and in fact this is a bluff that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons capability, then we know that our European friends will stand with us," he told the Post.
Kerry's approach is a shift from President George W. Bush's policy. The two candidates will face off in the November 2 election.
The Republican president's administration opposes the activation of Iran's power plant in the Gulf port of Bushehr, which Tehran says is being built exclusively for civilian purposes.
Washington believes Iran, one of the world's largest oil suppliers, has no need for nuclear energy and accuses Tehran of hiding a nuclear weapons development program under the guise of a civilian atomic energy program.
----
Edwards Says Kerry Plans to Confront Iran on Weapons
By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45216-2004Aug29.html
A John F. Kerry administration would propose to Iran that the Islamic state be allowed to keep its nuclear power plants in exchange for giving up the right to retain the nuclear fuel that could be used for bomb-making, Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said in an interview yesterday.
Edwards said that if Iran failed to take what he called a "great bargain," it would essentially confirm that it is building nuclear weapons under the cover of a supposedly peaceful nuclear power initiative. He said that, if elected, Kerry would ensure that European allies were prepared to join the United States in levying heavy sanctions if Iran rejected the proposal. "If we are engaging with Iranians in an effort to reach this great bargain and if in fact this is a bluff that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons capability, then we know that our European friends will stand with us," Edwards said.
Edwards's notion of proposing such a bargain with Iran, combined with Kerry's statement in December that he was prepared to explore "areas of mutual interest" with Iran, suggests that Kerry would take a sharply different approach with Iran than has President Bush. The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since its 1979 revolution, and Iran was part of Bush's "axis of evil" that included North Korea and the former government of Iraq. Earlier this month, Bush declared that Iran "must abandon her nuclear ambitions."
Edwards will deliver a speech today in Wilmington, N.C., that aides said will seek to sharpen the differences with the Bush administration on a range of foreign policy issues. Seizing on Bush's statement last week that he miscalculated the postwar conditions in Iraq, Edwards will lay out a broad indictment of how he believes the administration has miscalculated on Iraq, overseas alliances, Afghanistan and other issues.
Edwards, interviewed yesterday in the living room of his Georgetown townhouse as he sipped a Diet Coke, said that in Afghanistan, Kerry would push to expand NATO forces beyond Kabul to enhance security and would double the $123 million in funds to counter the drug trade that the administration spent in 2004 in Afghanistan. He said that despite the problems NATO has had in meeting its commitment in Afghanistan, Kerry would push NATO to add troops there and perhaps military equipment, but that the U.S. force of 20,000 would not be expanded.
"NATO has made promises that have not been kept by some of the NATO countries in getting the equipment -- helicopters, etc. -- that are needed there," Edwards said. "But we believe that with a president who treats NATO and the NATO countries the way they should be treated, and with a fresh start, we have a real chance of getting NATO more involved."
Edwards also said the Democrats would be able to obtain greater NATO involvement in Iraq for the same reason, even though NATO officials have said it will be difficult for the organization to undertake a major mission in Iraq until its work in Afghanistan is completed.
On Iran, Edwards accused the Bush administration of abdicating responsibility for the Iranian nuclear threat to the Europeans, who have maintained relations with Tehran and in the past years have tried to broker a deal that would end its nuclear enrichment program. "A nuclear Iran is unacceptable for so many reasons, including the possibility that it creates a gateway and the need for other countries in the region to develop nuclear capability -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt, potentially others," Edwards said.
Kerry first outlined the idea of providing nuclear fuel to Iran in a speech in June -- a proposal favored by many Europeans -- but Edwards, who twice described the concept as a "bargain," was more explicit in suggesting the Kerry administration would actively try to reach an agreement with the Iranians. "At the end of the day, we have to have some serious negotiating leverage in this discussion with the Iranians," he said, noting that Kerry would press the Europeans to do much more than "taking rewards away" if the Iranians fail to act.
Iran has insisted that it be allowed to produce nuclear fuel, which would give it access to weapons-grade material. Under Kerry's proposal, the Iranian fuel supply would be supervised and provided by other countries.
Experts on Iran have long speculated that some sort of "grand bargain" that would cover the nuclear programs, a lifting of sanctions and renewed relations with the United States would help solve the impasse between the two countries. But campaign aides later said Edwards was not suggesting an agreement that covered more than the nuclear programs. In the December speech, Kerry criticized Bush for failing to "conduct a realistic, nonconfrontational policy with Iran."
Despite its oil reserves, Iran has long sought nuclear energy to provide future energy for a burgeoning population, which has doubled since 1979. But Tehran, during the monarchy and under the current theocratic rulers, is also seeking nuclear energy as a key to development in the 21st century.
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Iran's last monarch, had plans -- approved by the United States -- to build more than 20 nuclear reactors. Iran is currently building one plant at Bushehr, a long-delayed project started during Pahlavi's reign with help from Germany. Russia took over the development contract after the revolution. Iran said this month that it plans to build a second at an unspecified location because of growing drains on its other resources.
The United States has long suspected that Iran wants to develop a nuclear capability to be able to make nuclear arms, and the Bush administration has pressed the International Atomic Energy Agency to confront Iran over its failure to fully disclose its activities. But reformists and hardliners in Tehran insist that Iran will continue developing a nuclear energy capacity, an issue that has become a symbol of national pride.
"At the end of the day [Bush officials] can argue all they want about their policies," Edwards said. "But the test is: Have they worked? And Iran is further along in developing a nuclear weapon than they were when George Bush came into office."
-------- israel
Israeli ministers urged to keep low profile on Iran nuclear issue
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Aug 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040830134521.iwk7ifu2.html
The director of Israeli military intelligence Aharon Zeevi urged government ministers Monday to leave it to the United States and the European Union to take the lead in preventing archfoe Iran developing nuclear weapons.
"Israel must not take centre stage on this issue, but instead leave space for the Americans and Europeans to handle this issue," Zeevi told a cabinet meeting, according to an aide of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Iran's nuclear programme threatens not only Israel but also the Gulf states and Europe.
"Any hasty declaration (by Israel) can only harm international (non-proliferation) efforts. It would be much better for us to maintain a low profile.
"2005 will be the decisive year in which it will become apparent whether Iran is going to follow North Korea and go nuclear despite the international pressure."
Justice Minister Yossef Lapid said the government could not ignore the seriousness of the issue.
"Iran and not the bombings (of Palestinian militants) are the real threat to Israel. That's why we have to deploy all our efforts and resources to face the challenge," the Sharon aide quoted him as saying.
The prime minister replied that the relevant government agencies were "constantly following the issue and making all necessary efforts."
In recent weeks, Iran has shown increasing nervousness about the possibility of a preemptive Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities and has warned that it would not to hesitate to strike back.
In 1981, Israeli warplanes took out Iraq's French-built Osirak nuclear reactor.
-------- japan
TEPCO restarts nuclear power unit after checks
Mon Aug 30, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZHIZ0YSZWSI3WCRBAEKSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=6098834
TOKYO, Aug 30 - Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) (9501.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Japan's biggest utility, said on Monday it had restarted a 1.1 million-kilowatt nuclear power generator in Fukushima prefecture, northwestern Japan after a shutdown for scheduled safety inspections.
TEPCO restarted the No. 2 nuclear power generation unit at its Fukushima Daini plant on Sunday and will test run the unit at a lower capacity for a number of weeks, the company said in a statement.
The unit, which had been shut since April 14, 2003, will return to normal capacity in late September.
The restart of the unit means 11 of TEPCO's 17 nuclear units are operating with a combined power generating capacity of 11.408 million kilowatts.
The 17 units have a total capacity of 17.308 million kilowatts.
-------- korea
N. Korea, Libya in Possible Nuclear Link
By GEORGE JAHN
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 5:36 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47063-2004Aug30.html
VIENNA, Austria - Some nuclear technology ordered by Libya for its former weapons program is missing, while the origin of other material is unclear, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Monday, raising concerns about where the equipment is and whether North Korea could have been a provider.
The IAEA findings on Libya's now dismantled nuclear weapons program were circulated to diplomats in a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press ahead of a meeting of the agency's board of governors. That meeting, which starts Sept. 13, will review the progress of IAEA investigations into secret nuclear activities by Libya and Iran.
The Iran report is expected to be released to diplomats in the next few days. While Iran denies accusations by the United States and others that its nuclear program is geared toward making weapons, Libya went public about its weapons programs in December and pledged to scrap them.
In the report Monday, the agency credited Libya with cooperation in efforts to get to the bottom of its activities, but said some questions remained.
Among them was the issue of some "enrichment technology" that was missing after Libya ordered but never received it.
The report also said the origin of two cylinders of uranium hexaflouride remains unknown. The material is introduced into centrifuges and spun to enrich it. Uranium enriched to 90 percent or above is considered weapons grade and is used in the manufacture of warheads.
The report confirmed that uranium hexaflouride was bought in 2000 "from a foreign supplier," but came to no conclusion of where the substance originated from.
A senior diplomat familiar with the Libyan investigation said the agency remained uncertain about whether the uranium hexaflouride was purchased on the black market from Pakistan or North Korea.
While Pakistan was the source of much of the enrichment technology peddled by the black market network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, North Korea has also been mentioned previously by experts and diplomats as a possible source for Libya's uranium hexaflouride.
North Korea admitted in 2002 to running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements. The isolated communist nation subsequently broke all agreements with the IAEA that had allowed outside monitoring of some of its programs.
On the missing equipment, the report said investigations continue on enrichment technology "destined for Libya ... (that) never arrived." It did not say what the material was.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigations focused on whether the equipment "ended up in the hands of another country or it's sitting on a dock somewhere and was never shipped."
"This is one of the big questions," said the diplomat. "Where did the other stuff go?"
While the agency has not found any indications that weapons-related technology has been sold by the nuclear network to terrorists, another diplomat said nothing could be discounted until all shipments sold on the black market had been accounted for.
The report also noted Libya's assertion that it never acted to develop a nuclear warhead based on blueprints found in its possession.
But the report suggested the agency could not test that claim until "the provider of the weapon design" and contractors who helped Libya develop its nuclear technology came forward with more information. Diplomats and experts have said the blueprints are of Chinese design and sold by the Khan network
The senior diplomat said that, without such help, the agency cannot tell if the blueprints were passed on to others interested in developing a clandestine weapons program.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: www.iaea.org
--------
Talking Human Rights With North Korea
By Roberta Cohen
Washington Post
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45417-2004Aug29.html
Whatever would Ronald Reagan think of the six-party talks to get North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program? Although Kim Jong Il's Communist government is the world's worst human rights violator, the United States, Japan and South Korea have managed to exclude all reference to humanitarian and human rights concerns from the discussions. Their fear is that any mention of the 200,000 political prisoners in forced labor camps, the suppression of the population's civil and political freedoms or the punishment meted out to those who try to flee the country would antagonize the North Korean government and jeopardize chances for a nuclear agreement.
This is hard to understand, given that when confronted by the Soviet Union, which had far greater nuclear power and targeted it specifically against the United States, Reagan did not see fit to give up on human rights goals. In fact, he publicly affirmed in 1982 that "the persecution of people" must be "on the negotiating table or the United States does not belong at that table." Similarly, President Jimmy Carter before him negotiated the SALT II arms control agreement with the Soviets while calling attention to human rights concerns.
Reagan and Carter were able to make this link because of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, an East-West agreement that created a multilateral forum for discussing security concerns, economic and scientific issues, and human rights. Moscow signed on for security guarantees -- the acknowledgment of post-World War II borders -- while the West secured a commitment to advance human rights. In fact, one of the lessons of this period was that only in that broad context of strategic, political and economic issues could progress be made on human rights.
Once they resume, the talks with North Korea, which involve the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China, could create a multilateral forum for the Korean Peninsula along the lines of the Helsinki process. The talks already cover nuclear and security issues, and more recently economic questions were added. Human rights and humanitarian issues should be brought in as well. For one thing, foreign investment in a country with forced labor must be linked to human rights standards. Any increase in food aid should go hand in hand with humanitarian principles of unimpeded access and equitable distribution. Nuclear verification and inspections would benefit as well from these openings.
South Korea's support should be sought as a first step toward creating a Helsinki framework. Since 1994 South Korea has gained experience of the Helsinki process through its partnership with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the successor to Helsinki. On the European continent, South Korea promotes democracy and human rights and sends election monitors to the Balkans. But on the Korean Peninsula it looks the other way, fearing that any mention of human rights in the North would trigger turmoil, collapse and an outpouring of refugees.
Yet, since 2001, North Korea has been involved, albeit modestly, in "human rights dialogues" with the European Union and the ambassadors from Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In a note to the United Nations, the North Koreans claim to have allowed the European Union "access to reform-through-labor centers and contact with former inmates."
Using those talks as a springboard, Europe's Helsinki organization could offer to bring North Korea into observer status. This would expose the country to multilateral discussions about democracy, freedom of movement, family reunification and the safeguarding of civil and political freedoms. Within this broader political and security framework, North Korea might be more willing to face up to its international human rights obligations.
China will need to be brought into the process as well. It hosts the six-party talks and is North Korea's primary ally. Between 200,000 and 300,000 North Koreans have fled to China because of famine, lack of work and persecution. There they face the threat of arrest and deportation. Yet promoting fairer food distribution in North Korea and improved human rights conditions would help curb refugee flows into China. A regional forum could also explore burden-sharing with countries willing to resettle North Koreans, such as Russia, where a provincial government has said it would take 200,000, and the United States, where Congress has expressed readiness to accept North Korean refugees.
Finally, a multilateral framework would help reconcile the differences between humanitarian and human rights advocates over how to deal with North Korea. Relief workers delivering food aid to North Korea fear that any overt criticism of the North's human rights record would limit humanitarian access. But mounting concerns over the diversion of international food aid to the army and communist elite -- rather than to the 6.5 million Koreans reported at risk -- have led to the withdrawal of leading nongovernmental organizations and a reduction in donations from governments. A Helsinki process would make food distribution part of the discussion along with human rights issues. As matters stand, a sense of direction is lacking for dealing with the serious human rights and humanitarian problems on the Korean Peninsula. The Helsinki process provided that essential element for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Adapted to Asia, it could do the same for North Korea.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in humanitarian issues. She will answer questions at 2 p.m. on Thursday at www.washingtonpost.com.
-------- libya
Libya Seems Honest About Nuke Program - UN Report
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-libya.html
VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report circulated Monday that Libya appears to have been telling the truth in its declarations on the covert atomic weapons program that it agreed to abandon last year.
``The agency's assessment to date is that Libya's declarations on its uranium conversion program, enrichment program and other past nuclear-related activities appear to be consistent with information available to and verified by the agency,'' the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Parts of the report were read to Reuters by a Western diplomat in Vienna.
However, the agency said there were still some issues that required further probing in order to reach a definitive conclusion on Tripoli's covert quest for the bomb.
``There are still some areas related to the acquisition of (uranium hexafluoride), uranium conversion technology and enrichment technology that need further investigation in order to fully verify the completeness and correctness of Libya's declarations,'' the diplomat quoted the report as saying.
The atomic agency also called on all member states to continue cooperating with the U.N. probe of the nuclear black market that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with sensitive nuclear technology.
Libya announced in December 2003 that it was abandoning its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and invited the atomic agency and other international verification bodies to oversee its disarmament.
The agency is expected to issue a similar progress report later this week on its inspections of Iran's nuclear program.
In contrast to Tripoli, which purchased nuclear technology from a Pakistani-led procurement network and admits wanting it for weapons, Tehran insists its illicit purchases were part of a peaceful atomic energy program.
The United States accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian energy program, a charge Iran denies. Washington has repeatedly called on Tehran to follow Libya's example and voluntarily disarm.
-------
UN Says Libya Earnest on Nukes, But Probes Design
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-libya.html
VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - Libya appears to be earnest in its efforts to reveal the extent of its atomic bomb program and no longer needs to be subjected to a special investigation, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report published Monday.
However, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in the confidential report that it will continue investigating a number of open questions, including whether Libya passed on the design for a nuclear warhead it acquired on the black market.
``The agency's assessment to date is that Libya's declarations on its uranium conversion program, enrichment program and other past nuclear-related activities appear to be consistent with information available to and verified by the agency,'' the agency said in the report obtained by Reuters.
The report also praised Libya for its ``good cooperation with the agency since the beginning of verification activities in Libya following Libya's declaration in December 2003.''
The final sentence of the report, written by agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, said the agency would report on its findings in Libya during its routine reports to the agency's Board of Governors ``unless circumstances warrant otherwise.''
One diplomat on the 35-member board said this meant Libya would no longer be a special inspection case for the board.
``The board will certainly approve removing Libya from the agenda at the September board meeting,'' the diplomat said.
Iran, which the United States accuses of developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program, has been subject to a special atomic agency probe for nearly two years and diplomats said it will likely remain under the agency's microscope.
Tehran insists Washington is wrong and demands that it be taken off the agenda.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's surprise decision last December to abandon banned weapons was one of the major steps in the recent reintegration of the once-isolated North African state into the international community.
This came shortly after Gaddafi agreed to pay damages for the 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Although its probe of Libya is proceeding well, the agency said some questions need to be answered before it can reach a definitive conclusion on Tripoli's quest for the bomb.
``There are still some areas related to the acquisition of (uranium hexafluoride), uranium conversion technology and enrichment technology that need further investigation in order to fully verify the completeness and correctness of Libya's declarations,'' the diplomat quoted the report as saying.
Diplomats said one of the most critical issues concerns a warhead design, which Libya received from the same Pakistani-led nuclear network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Mark Gwozdecky, the atomic agency's spokesman, said in order to be certain that Libya or the original providers did not pass on the design to other states the agency is ``going to need additional information from the provider and from the contractors which helped Libya develop its dual-use infrastructure.''
Western diplomats in Vienna have said that the design was most likely of Chinese origin and was provided by Pakistanis.
The United States and a number of other countries believe that Iran may also have acquired this weapons design, though the Iranians have denied getting the design or anything that would not be useful in a purely peaceful nuclear power program.
The atomic agency will circulate a similar progress report later this week on its inspections of Iran's nuclear program.
In contrast to Tripoli, which says it bought centrifuges and other pieces of nuclear machinery for a bomb program, Tehran insists its illicit purchases were part of a peaceful atomic energy program.
--------
U.N. Can't Define Libya Weapons Program
By GEORGE JAHN
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 11:33 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46414-2004Aug30.html
VIENNA, Austria - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency failed Monday to make a judgment on the origin of some technology for Libya's weapons program, a finding that diplomats said kept alive concerns of North Korean involvement.
In a restricted report the International Atomic Energy Agency also said that some of the equipment ordered by Libya as part of its program remains missing, raising concerns that other countries or groups might have secretly received it.
The IAEA report was made available to The Associated Press shortly after the agency began circulating it to diplomats ahead of a meeting of the agency's board of governors starting Sept. 13 that will review the progress of investigating secret nuclear activities by Libya and Iran.
The Iran report is expected to be released to diplomats in the next few days. While Iran denies accusations by the United States and others that its nuclear program is geared toward making weapons, Libya went public about its weapons programs in December and pledged then to scrap them.
In the report being circulated Monday, the agency credited Libya with cooperation in efforts to get to the bottom of its activities but said some questions remained outstanding.
Among them, the report focused on the origin of two cylinders of uranium hexaflouride, which is introduced into centrifuges and spun to enrich it. Uranium enriched to 90 percent or above is known as weapons grade, and is used in the manufacture of warheads.
The report confirmed that uranium hexaflouride was bought in 2000 "from a foreign supplier" but made no conclusion of where the substance originated from.
A senior diplomat familiar with the Libyan investigation said that indicated that the agency remained uncertain about whether the uranium hexaflouride was purchased on the black market from Pakistan or North Korea.
While Pakistan was the source of much of the enrichment technology peddled by the black market network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, both Pakistan and North Korea have been mentioned by experts as possible sources of origin for the uranium hexaflouride found in Libya.
"If it's North Korea, its obviously disturbing," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That means that North Korea was a member of the proliferator group, and so far we only knew of ... Pakistan."
North Korea admitted in 2002 to running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements. The isolated communist nation subsequently broke all agreements with the IAEA that had allowed outside monitoring of some of its programs.
On the missing equipment, the report said investigations continue on enrichment technology "destined for Libya ... (that) never arrived."
The diplomat said the investigations focused on whether the equipment "ended up in the hands of another country or its sitting on a dock somewhere and was never shipped."
"This is one of the big questions," said the diplomat. "Where did the other stuff go."
While the agency has not found any indications that weapons-related technology has been sold by the nuclear network to terrorists, another diplomat said nothing could be discounted until all shipments sold on the black market had been accounted for.
-------- mideast
UN atomic agency praises Libya, but 'critical questions' remain
VIENNA (AFP)
Aug 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040830170944.fvwkew7z.html
The UN atomic agency praised Libya on Monday for coming clean on its dismantled secret nuclear program but said "critical questions" remained as to whether Tripoli had given copies of nuclear weapons designs to other countries.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Libya and "other member states" of the IAEA would have to cooperate in investigating the Pakistani-run black market that supplied these designs, in a confidential report obtained by AFP ahead of a meeting of the agency's board of governors September 13.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said: "We've had excellent cooperation" since Libya agreed in December to dismantle its covert programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The United States has called on Iran, which the IAEA is also investigating on charges of secretly developing atomic weapons to be as forthcoming about its nuclear program as Libya has been.
The report said "the agency's assessment to date is that Libya's declarations on its uranium conversion program, enrichment program and other past nuclear related activities appear to be consistent with the information available to and verified by the agency."
But Gwozdecky said that "to have a full picture of what happened is going to involve ongoing work, particularly with the black market."
Gwozdecky said "critical questions" remained about whether Libya had made copies of the nuclear weapons designs it had obtained through the black market run by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
"We want to know if copies were made," he said. The investigation would focus on "getting information from the source of these (arms design) drawings," he said.
The weapons designs are believed to be Chinese blueprints, given to Pakistan in the 1980's, non-proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione said.
He said the IAEA was "clearly saying that China should step up and say if it provided this design."
"Reading between the lines you can see the IAEA inspectors are frustrated they are not getting more cooperation from other states involved in this transaction," Cirincione of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told AFP.
"The good news is that Libya is providing lots of information and cooperation.
"The bad news is that Libya seems to be holding back some information, particularly related to their suppliers and the possible receivers of some of the designs and equipment," Cirincione said.
IAEA inspectors had earlier this year found contamination from highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be weapons-grade, as well as low enriched uranium on gas centrifuge equipment in Libya.
This was similar to HEU contamination that has been found in Iran on centrifuge parts.
Monday's report said the IAEA had received so-called environmental swipes taken as samples by an unidentified state, apparently Pakistan, "from the suspected supplier of the components."
It said the state had "shared the sample data with the agency" but that the agency needed to take its own swipe samples to complete the investigation.
This could help the IAEA figure out whether the contamination it has found in Iran came from abroad or was the result of secret Iranian attempts to enrich uranium, Cirincione said.
The IAEA report said that "nearly all of the equipment involved in Libya's past nuclear activities was obtained from abroad, often with the involvement of private intermediaries."
It said investigating these foreign connections was "by nature somewhat slow ... and will continue for some time."
But the report said "good cooperation" from Libya "has enabled the agency to build an understanding of Libya's previously undeclared nuclear program."
The agency said the cooperation was so good that it would not need to compile a further report on Libya for the next board meeting in November and would monitor Libya through normal safeguard procedures.
The IAEA, the UN organization that verifies adherence to non-proliferation safeguards, has been overseeing Libya's disarmament, which Tripoli agreed to last December 19 with the United States and Britain.
----
U.N.: Origin of Libya Nuke Info Unclear
GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press
Mon, Aug. 30, 2004
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/world/9538145.htm
VIENNA, Austria - Some nuclear technology ordered by Libya for its former weapons program is missing, while the origin of other material is unclear, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Monday, raising concerns about where the equipment is and whether North Korea could have been a provider.
The IAEA findings on Libya's now dismantled nuclear weapons program were circulated to diplomats in a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press ahead of a meeting of the agency's board of governors. That meeting, which starts Sept. 13, will review the progress of IAEA investigations into secret nuclear activities by Libya and Iran.
The Iran report is expected to be released to diplomats in the next few days. While Iran denies accusations by the United States and others that its nuclear program is geared toward making weapons, Libya went public about its weapons programs in December and pledged to scrap them.
In the report Monday, the agency credited Libya with cooperation in efforts to get to the bottom of its activities, but said some questions remained.
Among them was the issue of some "enrichment technology" that was missing after Libya ordered but never received it.
The report also said the origin of two cylinders of uranium hexafluoride remains unknown. The material is introduced into centrifuges and spun to enrich it. Uranium enriched to 90 percent or above is considered weapons grade and is used in the manufacture of warheads.
The report confirmed that uranium hexafluoride was bought in 2000 "from a foreign supplier," but came to no conclusion of where the substance originated from.
A senior diplomat familiar with the Libyan investigation said the agency remained uncertain about whether the uranium hexafluoride was purchased on the black market from Pakistan or North Korea.
While Pakistan was the source of much of the enrichment technology peddled by the black market network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, North Korea has also been mentioned previously by experts and diplomats as a possible source for Libya's uranium hexafluoride.
North Korea admitted in 2002 to running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements. The isolated communist nation subsequently broke all agreements with the IAEA that had allowed outside monitoring of some of its programs.
On the missing equipment, the report said investigations continue on enrichment technology "destined for Libya ... (that) never arrived." It did not say what the material was.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigations focused on whether the equipment "ended up in the hands of another country or it's sitting on a dock somewhere and was never shipped."
"This is one of the big questions," said the diplomat. "Where did the other stuff go?"
While the agency has not found any indications that weapons-related technology has been sold by the nuclear network to terrorists, another diplomat said nothing could be discounted until all shipments sold on the black market had been accounted for.
The report also noted Libya's assertion that it never acted to develop a nuclear warhead based on blueprints found in its possession.
But the report suggested the agency could not test that claim until "the provider of the weapon design" and contractors who helped Libya develop its nuclear technology came forward with more information. Diplomats and experts have said the blueprints are of Chinese design and sold by the Khan network
The senior diplomat said that, without such help, the agency cannot tell if the blueprints were passed on to others interested in developing a clandestine weapons program.
ON THE NET
International Atomic Energy Agency: www.iaea.org
-------- terrorism
Plenty to worry about
08-30-2004
Cincinnati Post
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist.
His e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com.
http://www.cincypost.com/2004/08/30/will083004.html
WASHINGTON -- As Republicans convene less than 4 miles from Ground Zero, the presidential contest is crystallized by that proximity. The next four years will be the most dangerous in the nation's history because the 9-11 attacks were pinpricks compared to a clear and almost present menace. This year's pre-eminent question, beside which all others pale, is: Which candidate can best cope with the threat of nuclear terror?
A blood-chilling book on that is "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe" by Graham Allison of the Kennedy School of Government, currently an adviser to John Kerry. Allison's indictment of the Iraq War -- as a dangerous distraction from and impediment to the war on nuclear terror he advocates -- is severable from his presentation of stark facts about the simultaneous spread of scientific knowledge and apocalyptic religious worldviews:
A dirty bomb -- conventional explosives dispersing radioactive materials that are widely used in industry and medicine -- exploded in midtown Manhattan could make much of the island uninhabitable for years. As many as one in every 100 Manhattanites might develop cancer. Perhaps even more people would die in the panic than would be killed by radiation. But even dirty bombs are relative pinpricks.
The only serious impediment to creating a nuclear weapon is acquisition of fissionable material -- highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium. In 1993, U.S. officials used ordinary bolt cutters to snip off the padlock that was the only security at an abandoned Soviet-era facility containing enough HEU for 20 nuclear weapons. In 2002, enough fissile material for three weapons was recovered from a laboratory in a Belgrade suburb. Often an underpaid guard and a chain-link fence are the only security at the more than 130 nuclear reactors and other facilities using HEU in 40 countries.
Allison says that at least four times between 1992 and 1999 weapons-useable materials were stolen from Russian research institutes but recovered. How many thefts have not been reported? The U.S. Cold War arsenal included Special Atomic Demolition Munitions that could be carried in a backpack. The Soviet arsenal often mimicked America's. Russia denies that "suitcase" nuclear weapons exist, so it denies reports that at least 80 are missing. Soviet military forces deployed 22,000 tactical nuclear warheads -- without individual identification numbers. Who thinks all have been accounted for? Russia probably has 2 million pounds of weapons-useable material -- enough for 80,000 weapons.
In December 1994, Czech police seized more than eight pounds of HEU in a parked car on a side street. A senior al-Qaida aide's proclaimed goal of killing 4 million Americans would require 1,400 9-11s, or one 10-kiloton nuclear explosion -- from a softball-sized lump of fissionable material -- in four large American cities.
Of the 7 million seaborne cargo containers that arrive at U.S. ports each year, fewer than 5 percent are inspected. Fewer than 10 percent of arriving noncommercial private vessels are inspected. Given that 21,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana are smuggled into the country each day, how hard would it be to smuggle a softball-sized lump of HEU on one of the 30,000 trucks, 6,500 rail cars or 50,000 cargo containers that arrive every day?
President Bush recently said Democratic critics of rapid development of ballistic missile defenses are "living in the past." Perhaps. Some missile defense is feasible and, leaving aside costs, desirable. But costs cannot be left aside. Kerry, were he politically daring and intellectually nimble, might respond: "A nuclear weapon is much less likely to come to America on a rogue nation's ICBM -- which would have a return address -- than in a shipping container, truck, suitcase, backpack or other ubiquitous things. So allocating vast amounts of scarce financial and scientific resources to missile defenses rather than other security measures is imprudent."
On the other hand, Allison argues that any hope for preventing, by diplomacy, nuclear terrorism depends on "readiness to use covert and overt military force if necessary" against two potential sources of fissile material -- Iran and North Korea. But the candidate Allison is advising has opposed virtually every use of U.S. force in his adult lifetime.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Nuclear plant layoffs revive fatigue fears
By TOM HENRY
TOLEDO BLADE STAFF WRITER
Monday, August 30, 2004
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040830/NEWS30/408300322/-1/NEWS
FirstEnergy Corp.'s decision to eliminate 205 salaried nuclear jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania is indicative of belt-tightening that has occurred nationwide in the utility sector: Companies merge and find ways to operate more efficiently so they can keep their electricity prices down and weather competition in today's deregulated market.
But at what point do utilities cross the line and sacrifice safety?
That's a question the Nuclear Regulatory Commission first tried to address through an agency policy in 1982 and began wrestling with again five years ago at its headquarters in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Md., in part because of concerns raised by U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D., Dearborn) and other congressmen in 1999.
"The fact that staffing has been reducing [nationwide] has not been lost on the NRC," David Desauliners, the agency's point man for worker fatigue issues, told The Blade.
The NRC officially has no authority to set minimum staffing requirements beyond those for a nuclear plant's control room - yet. Its sole mission is to ensure safety, irrespective of worker numbers.
But since 1999, it has been developing a rule for regulating worker fatigue under fitness-for-duty laws, the ones that companies use to frame their drug-and-alcohol policies. It is to be presented to the agency's governing board by December, 2005.
For years, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has had limits on the consecutive number of hours truck drivers can spend behind the wheel. The Federal Aviation Administration has limits on the consecutive number of hours that pilots can fly.
But officials acknowledge that nuclear plant employees may at times be subjected to unreasonable routines, leaving them too fatigued to be as sharp-minded as they should.
One goal of the new rule is to give them an outlet for being frank about when they're too tired to work, without facing repercussions.
The NRC's 1982 policy stated that workers should not be on the job more than 14 consecutive days or more than 12 hours at a time, for a maximum of 72 hours a week. But Mr. Dingell and others questioned how well that policy was being enforced.
"Fortunately, we have not seen fatigue as a causal factor in a number of significant events," said Mr. Desauliners, senior human factor specialist in the NRC's inspection program division. But, he conceded, "There may be cases where fatigue was involved, but the person wasn't aware of it."
Davis-Besse's recent two-year shutdown wore down many employees. Some workers claimed to have put in excess of 72 hours a week, for months.
An industrial psychologist the company hired to assess the plant's safety culture warned of burnout. Spouses in the fall of 2003 voiced anger at the NRC itself, accusing it of indirectly contributing to marital stress by failing to demand a more reasonable pace on the employees' behalf.
And throughout several key junctions, the NRC claimed the plant's severely corroded reactor head was a result of "missed opportunities" to fix the problem, long before acid had escaped from the reactor and melted the massive steel lid to the width of a pencil eraser, the thinness that it was found in 2002.
The NRC admittedly was guilty of a little too much budget-crunching itself. At the time, it had only one resident inspector assigned to the plant instead of the customary two. The agency had been in a temporary hiring freeze and, believing at the time that Davis-Besse had no problems, put its resources elsewhere. It now has three resident inspectors at Davis-Besse, the most found at any single-unit plant.
Davis-Besse's restart in March allowed workers to return to a more normal routine.
But last week, FirstEnergy announced 205 of some 2,700 jobs within its nuclear operating company were being eliminated. In addition to Davis-Besse, the utility operates the Perry nuclear plant east of Cleveland, the twin-unit Beaver Valley complex west of Pittsburgh, and the skeletal crew that oversees the dormant Three Mile Island-2 unit that had a partial meltdown in 1979.
Sixty-three of those lost jobs are at Davis-Besse, with 35 layoffs taking effect immediately and 28 more planned as various projects are finished.
The reductions, once completed, will bring Davis-Besse's workforce down to 740 employees.
Taken as a whole, the layoffs are one of the biggest jolts to staffing since retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joe Williams, Jr., took control of the reins during the plant's prolonged 1985-86 outage and went in the opposite direction, increasing the payroll from 644 employees in 1985 to 890 in 1986. Staffing might have exceeded 900 in the early to mid-1990s.
The numbers gradually receded to the low 800s and held steady there until recently, largely through attrition, Richard Wilkins, company spokesman, said.
In his notice to employees last Monday, Gary Leidich - FirstEnergy's nuclear operating company president - told them it's not a matter of how many workers the company has at each of its sites, but how well they perform.
One of the reasons FirstEnergy hired Mr. Leidich in 2002 from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an industry research arm, was to consolidate the company's nuclear division and streamline it in such a way that it would run more efficiently and effectively. The utility had been planning a massive reorganization to become more competitive before the reactor-head problem was revealed, Mr. Wilkins said.
David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear safety engineer, said it's possible to downsize the workforce and get better results. "But if you work the [layoff] survivors too many hours, then you run the risk of them becoming fatigued," he said.
Mr. Lochbaum has participated in the rule-making process for the fatigue issue.
"The right way is to make yourself productive first. The wrong way is to make across-the-board cuts," he said. "If you make a mistake in applying resources, the consequences can be large."
Paul Gunter, reactor watchdog project director for the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, an activist group in Washington, said FirstEnergy's decision to lay off nearly 10 percent of its nuclear workforce in one shot "obviously has an impact on the worker morale."
"That, in fact, is a safety concern," he said. "It's this competition between profit margin and safety risk that got them into trouble in the first place and could get them in trouble again."
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Taliban Warns of More Attacks as Kabul Toll Rises
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-explosion.html
KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban warned on Monday of further deadly attacks in the run-up to Afghanistan's first presidential election after a car bomb in the heart of the capital killed up to a dozen people.
Three Americans were among those killed in the blast, aimed at the offices of international security company DynCorp, which provides bodyguards for Afghan president Hamid Karzai and also helps train the national police force.
The explosion in Kabul came less than 24 hours after another blast killed 10 people, including nine children, at a religious school in Paktia province, south of Kabul.
And in a separate incident on Sunday, Afghan troops captured five Taliban in the southeastern city of Kandahar before they could carry out an attack on U.S.-led forces, Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for the provincial governor, told Reuters.
After the Kabul blast, senior Taliban commander said any city with a Western presence could be a target ahead of the Oct. 9 elections, which U.S. ally Karzai is widely expected to win.
``We have started our operations from Kabul under new planning and preparation,'' said commander Mullah Daudullah, one of the ten members of the Taliban council headed by Mullah Omar, an ally of Osama bin Laden.
``We will carry out more attacks and bombings in Kabul and many of our mujahideen are present in cities where the occupying forces of infidels are present,'' he told Reuters by satellite telephone.
Sunday's blast, the biggest in the capital in nearly two years, raised concern over an already deteriorating security. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in the past year -- including militants, soldiers, civilians, aid workers and election officials.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul on Monday advised its citizens to avoid military facilities, national and international government buildings, crowded places such as bazaars and restaurants and internet cafes frequented by foreigners.
Staff at international organizations have been advised to lie low and increase security.
Analysts expect President Bush to cite the advent of democracy in Afghanistan as a foreign policy success as he seeks re-election himself in November.
UNCERTAINTY OVER TOLL
The actual number of people killed in Sunday's blast has been shrouded in confusion with Afghan officials initially saying seven, the U.S. military six and eyewitnesses and police saying more. A day later, none of the authorities, either Afghan or western military, were sure of the final tally.
NATO-led peacekeepers cordoned off the DynCorp building, and Federal Bureau of Investigation officers based at the U.S. embassy are leading the investigation.
The Taliban denied responsibility for Saturday's school blast, saying guerrillas were only targeting military centers or election staff.
U.S. spokesman Nelson said an improvised explosive device had been planted in the school and that the local authorities reported the academy's director went missing two days ago and they suspect he had been murdered.
The motive may have been some extremist group's anger at the modern curriculum taught in the madrassah, where classes for women were also held and funded by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Taliban, driven from power in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces, have threatened to step up attacks ahead of the presidential election and parliamentary polls in April. They dismiss the democratic process as an American sham.
Some 18,000 U.S.-led troops along with the newly formed Afghan National Army are hunting Taliban and Islamist militant insurgents in the country's south and southeast.
There are also over 8,000 NATO-led peacekeepers in charge of security in Kabul and northern Afghanistan.
--------
AFGHANISTAN
7 Killed in Kabul as Bombing Rips a U.S. Contractor
August 30, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/international/asia/30afghan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 29 - At least seven people, including at least two Americans, were killed Sunday when a powerful bomb exploded outside the compound of an American contractor helping to train the Afghan police.
A spokesman for the International Security and Assistance Force in Kabul, Squad Leader Peter Maskell, said a second bomb had been found next to the explosion site and had been defused by French explosives experts.
The bombing comes just 40 days before presidential elections, scheduled for Oct. 9, and after warnings that the Taliban and other militant groups were planning major attacks in Kabul before the elections. It is the deadliest attack in Kabul since September 2002, when 26 civilians died in a car bombing.
American and Afghan officials say the building attacked Sunday was used by DynCorp Inc., which provides security for President Hamid Karzai and also has a contract to train the police force. The building also included some residences, the officials said.
In a telephone interview, a Taliban spokesman, Latif Hakimi, claimed responsibility for the attack, on what he called an American base involved in reconstruction. He also promised more attacks, saying, "Lots of Taliban mujahedeen have entered Kabul, and we will explode more bombs."
Western diplomats have sought to increase pressure on Pakistan in recent days because of concern that Taliban fighters have found sanctuary there, making it easier for them to plan and execute attacks.
Mr. Karzai's office said two Americans, three Nepalese and two Afghans, including a child, had been killed. Nick Downie, the security coordinator for the Afghanistan NGO Security Office, who was among the first at the site, estimated that four American DynCorp employees, three or four Afghans, and three Nepalese Gurkhas providing security for DynCorp had been killed. Several other people were seriously wounded.
"The president understands that as the people of Afghanistan move toward elections, the enemies of Afghanistan will expedite their efforts to harm the election process and threaten the people's security and prosperity," the statement from President Karzai's office said. "However, Afghanistan will continue relentlessly on the path that the people of this country have chosen: the path of peace, prosperity and reconstruction."
The bomb went off around 5:45 p.m., shattering glass blocks away and sending a huge black plume into the Kabul sky. Fifteen minutes later, a fire raged at the site, and at least two bodies were visible in the street - one almost a block from the explosion site. DynCorp employees wearing bulletproof vests and carrying automatic weapons fanned out in the street, tending to the wounded and pushing back spectators.
Lutfullah Mashaal, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the engine of some kind of truck had been found 300 meters away. He said it appeared likely that the attack was a suicide bombing because DynCorp security usually prohibits anyone from stopping in front of the house.
Mr. Hakimi, however, insisted that the bomber had survived.
In a separate incident, eight children and one adult died in an explosion in a madrasa in Paktia Province on Saturday night. Mr. Hakimi insisted that the Taliban were not responsible for that attack, however. Afghan and American military officials said they were still investigating the cause of the explosion.
The bombing in Kabul followed a period of relative quiet in the city. A bombing in June 2003 killed four German peacekeepers, and in January 2004 a suicide attack killed a Canadian peacekeeper.
But despite repeated warnings, discoveries of explosives caches and multiple attacks on aid workers and contractors outside Kabul, the international civilian representatives in the capital have been largely immune from attack, until Sunday.
The blast, Mr. Downie said, moved armored vehicles parked in front of the compound and sent body and vehicle parts flying 70 yards. Explosives experts on his staff estimated that more than 200 pounds of explosives had been used, he said.
He also noted the heavy security DynCorp employed at the compound, including Gurkhas posted at both ends of the street. He said it had appeared that the bombing was either a "suicide attack or a Trojan horse that got past some very good security on that street."
The compound is on a crowded, affluent residential area, Shar-e-Nau, which has become home to many international organizations and guesthouses for their employees.
"This blast occurred on the front doorstep," Mr. Downie said. The carnage would probably have been worse, DynCorp employees told him, had a number of people not left for dinner shortly before.
DynCorp officials could not be reached for comment on the bombing.
Mr. Downie said that attacks had been forecast as the elections came closer, and that in recent days "we focused much more on this." In the last 24 hours, his security group, the United Nations and the International Security and Assistance Force in Kabul had issued specific suicide bomb attack warnings.
Mr. Maskell, the security force spokesman, said the force and Afghan security forces had found a number of explosives in recent weeks, and would continue to work to prevent attacks.
Mr. Downie's advice to the many nongovernmental organizations in Kabul employing foreign nationals was "to basically hibernate" and step up security around their compounds.
"We've seen what we predicted," he said. "We'll see what ISAF and the security forces in and out of Kabul can do to prevent this from happening again, but personally I can't say I'm optimistic."
-------- africa
Darfur Still Troubled as UN Deadline Runs Out
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-sudan-darfur.html
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A U.N.-imposed deadline for Sudan to prove it can protect the people of strifetorn Darfur ran out on Monday, but international officials said the violence was far from over.
Nigerian President and African Union (AU) chairman Olusegun Obasanjo said AU monitors had confirmed allegations by Darfur rebels that the Sudan government launched fresh attacks on civilians last week.
``The reported attacks by the government forces have been confirmed to me by the AU chairman of the cease-fire monitoring commission,'' Obasanjo told a news conference in the Nigerian capital Abuja, where peace talks are being held between the Sudanese government and rebels.
Obasanjo said he had written to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir asking him to ensure all attacks on civilians by government forces and Arab Janjaweed militia stopped, to avoid undermining the Abuja talks.
The comments came on the day the U.N. had set as a deadline for Sudan to address the crisis or face possible sanctions.
Rebels have already staged a 24-hour boycott of the peace talks in protest at the latest attacks, which they say killed 75 civilians in six villages.
Up to 50,000 people have died since the conflict began in February 2003 and more than a million have fled their homes for fear of attack by the Janjaweed.
Darfur rebels and rights groups say the Arab militia have been mobilized by Khartoum to help crush rebels and have waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing of African villages.
RAPE
Khartoum denies all allegations of collusion with the Janjaweed. ``Actually the Sudanese government is enforcing the cease-fire agreement and does not need to be reminded to do so,'' government delegation leader Majzoub al-Khalifa said in Abuja.
He said he believed the United Nations would probably not advocate sanctions as his government had helped improve the situation on the ground and talks were still in progress.
Speaking in Nairobi, Dennis McNamara, special advisor to the U.N. Emergency Relief Co-ordinator on Displacement, said recent attacks in Darfur included rapes by militia of women and girls.
``It hasn't stopped. There are enough first-hand, credible reports that this remains a major problem,'' he told a news conference after visiting victims in Darfur camps. ``Security needs to be improved and perpetrators need to be prosecuted.''
The State Department said security in Darfur remained a ``major problem'' despite signs of progress and said it was concerned about continued reports of violence against civilians.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Constance Berry Newman visited a refugee camp in Darfur on Monday and would meet senior Sudanese officials in Khartoum, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
``She's going to say that it's... vital for the government of Sudan to comply fully with its own commitments, comply fully with the requirements of the U.N. resolution,'' he said.
SANCTIONS NOT LIKELY YET
The U.N. Security Council will soon receive a report on Darfur from U.N. special envoy Jan Pronk, who is scheduled to address the 15-member body on Thursday.
Reports from the United Nations and others have made clear that Sudan has not reined in the Arab militias, as the council demanded in a resolution last month, but say it has cooperated in dealing with the humanitarian crisis.
U.S. officials insist sanctions remain an option but acknowledge the votes are not there for them now.
``It has become increasingly clear that the key to protecting the people of Darfur is an AU mission in sufficient numbers,'' said a spokesman for John Danforth, U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
Around 150 Nigerian soldiers arrived on Monday in el-Fasher, capital of Northern Darfur state, to join troops sent by Rwanda to protect the AU representatives monitoring a cease-fire.
Sudan accused rebels of kidnapping aid workers. The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs said rebels seized eight workers from the U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP) and the Sudanese Red Crescent in Northern Darfur.
``The outlaws do not want the security situation for the people of Darfur to stabilize and that is within the context of their behavior, which has consistently targeted humanitarian work,'' a ministry statement said.
WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said three Sudanese working for WFP and five Sudanese Red Crescent workers had been last heard from on Saturday afternoon.
--------
Sudan Asks U.N. for 'Reasonable Decision'
By ED JOHNSON
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 5:45 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47149-2004Aug30.html
AL-FASHER, Sudan - As a U.N. deadline expires for Sudan to ease the crisis in Darfur, the situation on the ground remains bleak - villagers forced from their homes by gunmen on horseback still cower in camps for the displaced, and reports the Sudanese military is bombing villagers continue to surface.
The Sudanese government, which was given 30 days by the United Nations to rein in Arab militiamen or face penalties, appealed Monday to the Security Council to make a "reasonable decision."
"Of course, we are concerned," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told Associated Press Television in Khartoum, the capital. "We wish ... the relationship with the Security Council will not be the way of confrontation. We hope it will be in the form of cooperation."
His remarks came as a U.S. State Department official assessed conditions for thousands of displaced people in Darfur, and a contingent of 155 Nigerian soldiers arrived, swelling the ranks of an African Union mission monitoring a shaky cease-fire between government troops and rebels.
Three U.N. teams report Tuesday to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on whether the government is doing all it can to disarm the Arab militia.
Known as Janjaweed, the militiamen are blamed for killing and raping black African villagers and for driving more than 1 million people from their homes, sparking what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The Security Council will meet Thursday and consider whether to take action against Khartoum. The United States has advocated sanctions against the government.
"We hope the Security Council will come out with a reasonable decision that will help us to continue working together," Ismail said.
Constance Berry Newman, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, touched down at Al-Fasher airport in a U.N. World Food Program twin-engine plane. She was briefed by aid agencies and U.N. officials before touring Abu Shouk camp, home to some 43,000 villagers driven from their homes in 18 months of fighting between government troops and rebels.
Ismail refused to meet with Newman in Khartoum, and the official Sudanese news agency quoted him as saying it was in protest of the State Department's failure to help Sudan keep its embassy open in Washington. Sudan announced Wednesday the embassy had closed because it was unable to find a bank that would handle its financial matters.
Children clamored around Newman as she visited a classroom in the camp, where students sat in the shade on mats to learn about basic sanitation and the importance of clean drinking water.
She later watched as aid workers inoculated babies against measles.
Newman declined to speak with journalists during the visit.
At Abu Shouk camp, on the outskirts of Al-Fasher, residents have begun to build mud walls around their straw and tarpaulin shelters, and simple fences from scrub and thorn tree branches, replicating conditions in their villages.
Some have planted vegetables and corn outside their huts, and a small market thrives on the edge of the desert settlement.
At Zam Zam camp, 12 miles away, local butchers sell freshly slaughtered goats. Some displaced still have enough cash from last year's harvest of crops, such as tobacco and sorghum, to buy better food than the wheat, oil and salt rations provided monthly by the aid agencies.
Some have their own donkeys and some children wear clean clothes and ride bicycles. The less fortunate wear tattered and dirty smocks.
Although conditions in the camp are often no worse than in their own villages, many of the displaced are eager to return home. Unable to plant crops, they know they will rely on food aid until the fall harvest next year.
"The land in Darfur is sacred," said Abu Shouk camp manager Abdel Aziz el-Fateh. "People love their land and worship their land, and consider this camp a grave."
Many say they are afraid to return home, fearing further attacks.
"We are happy and living here securely but we still need more - and we need them to give us more peace," said Kalthoum Mohammed Haroun.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since two rebel factions took up arms against the government in February 2003 - escalating years of low-level conflict between African farmers and Arab herders who competed for water and land. The rebels, drawn from African tribes, rose up against the Arab-dominated government, claiming discrimination and political marginalization.
Human rights groups, the U.S. Congress and U.N. officials accuse the government of trying to crush the rebellion by backing the Janjaweed - allegations Khartoum has repeatedly denied.
Dennis McNamara, a senior official in the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, told reporters Monday in Nairobi, Kenya, that attacks on civilians have continued in Darfur and too little has been done to stem the humanitarian crisis.
Women and girls are still being raped by militiamen as they leave camps to collect firewood, McNamara said.
Efforts to forge peace between rebels and the government at talks in Abuja, Nigeria, have proved fruitless, with each side accusing the other of violating the April 8 cease-fire.
But top government negotiator Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad said Monday that there has been progress.
"All the aspects of the Darfur issue - the humanitarian issue and the security issue, and the accessibility to the different NGOs - are progressing satisfactorily, and so I'm expecting a positive decision from the U.N."
His words were countered by Ahmed Tugod Lissan, head of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement delegation.
"So far, nothing has been done and we will say this clearly: There has been no improvement in the situation. Therefore, the Sudanese government will see the consequences of not complying with their commitments," Lissan said.
Twenty miles from Al-Fasher, the small mud and straw hut village of Um Hashab lies in ruins after fighting between government forces and rebels. Villagers told The Associated Press they were attacked Thursday by Sudanese troops who dropped bombs from helicopters.
The African Union, which has a team of 80 cease-fire observers, said it was investigating the claims.
Ahmad, the government negotiator in Abuja, said the government was enforcing the cease-fire and that until more information of alleged attacks was obtained, "I don't think we can be accused of anything."
APTN producer Navine Mabro contributed to this report from Khartoum.
--------
U.N. Official Says Darfur Refugees Still at Risk
Reuters
By Daniel Wallis
Monday, August 30, 2004; 8:38 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46043-2004Aug30.html
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Attacks on refugees in Sudan's Darfur region are still a major problem, a senior U.N. official said Monday, as a deadline approached for Sudan to give them better protection or face U.N. sanctions.
Dennis McNamara, special advisor to the U.N. Emergency Relief Co-ordinator on Displacement, said the attacks included multiple rapes by armed militia of Darfuri women and girls.
"It hasn't stopped. There are enough first-hand, credible reports that this remains a major problem ... Security needs to be improved and perpetrators need to be prosecuted," he told a news conference in Nairobi after visiting victims in the camps.
He was speaking as the Sudanese government and Darfuri rebel groups prepared to resume peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja meant to find a political solution to a conflict which has killed up to 50,000 people since it began in February 2003.
Sudan, under international pressure, began the talks with the rebels last week, but negotiations have so far foundered amid accusations of cease-fire violations on both sides.
More than a million Darfuris have fled their homes for fear of attack by Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, mobilized by the Sudanese government as auxiliaries in the campaign to crush the rebels. Khartoum says the attacks on Darfuris were carried out by "outlaws" and it is not responsible for their actions.
The U.N. Security Council has set an Aug. 30 deadline for the Sudanese government to improve safety for Darfuri refugees or face possible sanctions.
TRAUMATISED POPULATION
McNamara said that, though there had been improvements in getting humanitarian aid through, many refugees were still living in atrocious conditions.
"There is a protection crisis in Darfur today," he said. "We are not able to adequately protect displaced civilians."
He saw little chance of refugees going home soon.
"This is essentially a very traumatized population ... We do not see any realistic prospects for large scale returns of displaced people to their home villages in the near future."
Sudan's ambassador to Britain, Hasan Abdin, said Khartoum had already begun to take action against the militias but the process would take some time.
"I think it's unfair to say that nothing has been done," he told BBC radio. "Yes, there are incidents."
"But I think what is important is that the process has started and it was very clear from the very beginning ... that this (will) take some time, especially for the security issues."
Monday, 150 Nigerian troops left for Darfur as part of an African Union force mandated for the region, military officials said. They were to join 155 troops sent by Rwanda to protect African Union representatives monitoring a cease-fire there.
McNamara refused to be drawn on what decision the Security Council would take over Monday's deadline for Khartoum. "It's a political process that's going to take its own course," he said. "(But) this is D-Day to some extent on Sudan in New York."
-------- arms
Putin lifts ban on Russian arms sales to Iraq
MOSCOW (AFP)
Aug 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040830143319.escjh6js.html
President Vladimir Putin has lifted a 13-year-old ban on sales by Russian companies of weapons to Iraq, the Kremlin announced Monday.
"The ban on sales or delivery of arms and military property to Iraq introduced by earlier UN Security Council resolutions does not apply to arms and property required by the Iraqi interim government or by multinational forces", according to a directive signed by Putin Thursday and published on the Kremlin website.
The order said the lifting of the ban, which applied to governmental bodies as well as private companies and individuals, sought to implement a UN Security Council resolution that fully endorsed Iraq's newly formed interim government and gave the country more freedom in security matters.
The resolution, approved by the UN Security Council unanimously on June 8, granted Iraqis "full responsibility and authority" for their country and the freedom to dispose of oil and gas revenues collected for the Development Fund for Iraq.
Russia has enjoyed close trade relations with Iraq for decades and had strongly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The ban on weapons was introduced in 1991 after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.
----
Global Arms Sales Drop Again, Asia Biggest Market
August 30, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-global.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global arms sales fell for a third consecutive year in 2003, dropping to $25.6 billion from a peak of $41 billion in 2000, and Asia has overtaken the Middle East as the biggest customer, according to a study released on Monday.
The United States and Russia continued to dominate the global arms market, with Washington maintaining its lead in weapons sales with deals valued at more than $14.5 billion, up from $13.6 billion in 2002, the Congressional Research Service found.
Russia ranked second with deals worth $4.3 billion, according to the annual unclassified report on conventional arms sales. Germany ranked as third, signing deals worth $1.4 billion, it said.
The report said arms sales had declined globally due to economic factors, dampening demand for pricey new weapons systems and prompting even wealthy countries to focus on upgrades and modernization rather than replacement of arms.
For years, the Middle East has been the largest arms market in the developing world, but in the period from 2000-2003 China led Asia into the top position with the region signing deals worth $33.8 billion or 50.8 percent of all arms deals, the report found.
During that three-year period China concluded arms agreements valued at $9.3 billion, followed by the United Arab Emirates with deals valued at $8.1 billion. In 2003, Egypt ranked first with deals valued at $1.8 billion, followed by China with $1.6 billion and Malaysia with $1.5 billion.
Russia, which became the top supplier of weapons to Asia in the mid-1990s, increased its grip on that market from 2000 to 2003, signing agreements worth $16.5 billion or 48.8 percent, helped by big combat aircraft sales to India and China.
It has also increased its customer base with aircraft orders from Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia.
CHINA'S ROLE
The report said few clients had sought to purchase Chinese military equipment in recent years, since much of it was less advanced and sophisticated than weaponry available from Western suppliers or Russia.
China was unlikely to be a major supplier of conventional weapons in the foreseeable future, but it was a key source of missile sales to the developing world, the report noted.
``China can present an important obstacle to efforts to stem proliferation of advanced missile systems to some areas of the developing world where political and military tensions are significant,'' the report said, noting China's continued need for hard currency and demand for its missiles.
The United States ranked second as an arms supplier to Asia, concluding deals valued at $7.1 billion or 20.6 percent in the 2000 to 2003 period.
The Middle East accounted for 37 percent of all arms deals from 2000 to 2003, a decline from the earlier 1996 to 1999 period, when it accounted for 44 percent of all arms sales.
The United States continues to dominate that market.
Grimmett said Middle East arms sales have declined after a buying spree touched off by the 1991 Gulf War, with Saudi Arabia buying 43 percent fewer weapons in the 2000-2003 period, compared to the earlier three-year period. He said Saudi Arabia needed to absorb the large weapons purchases it made recently.
----
Bush gives defense industry big budget
Bush's $417 billion bill beats Cold War average spending
By Jim Snyder
AUGUST 30, 2004
The Hill
http://www.thehill.com/news/083004/defense.aspx
Under President Bush, the defense industry has been well-protected.
The $417 billion defense spending bill that President Bush signed in July is 12 percent higher than the average budget during the Cold War, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), which tracks federal defense spending.
The Pentagon expects to spend nearly $490 billion by fiscal year 2009 as new ships, planes and next-generation fighting tools come off the production lines. That's 23 percent higher than the average Soviet-inspired U.S. defense budget, CSBA states.
With the spending tap turned on full blast, investors have poured money into defense-industry stocks under the Bush administration.
Shares on Standard & Poor's aerospace and defense index were priced at $255.18 on Aug. 24, up 25 percent from a year earlier and near a 52-week high of $257.
But what happens if John Kerry wins?
Republicans have blasted the Massachusetts Democrat for voting to cut defense systems over the course of his more than two decades in the Senate. With American troops in Iraq and orange terror alerts in several major American cities, the GOP's message is clear: Democrats can't be trusted to take on the terrorists.
But defense analysts and inside-the-Beltway experts said it isn't certain that a Kerry presidency will mean cuts in defense spending.
"I'd say the general consensus is that defense spending will remain high," said Suzanne Betts, a defense analyst at Argus Research. "It would just be a question of a shift in spending priorities."
Historically, Democrats have a record of cutting defense budgets - one reason polls show that Americans associate the GOP with strength and Democrats with softer terms, such as compassion.
President Jimmy Carter cut defense spending. So did President Bill Clinton, continuing a trend started by President George H.W. Bush. Clinton then presided over a spending upswing in the final two years of his presidency. But neither Carter nor Clinton was president during a war on terror.
The issue is about more than where investors put their money.
Polls show that voters are more concerned about national security than about the economy. Not since the Vietnam era has that been the case.
In an August poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 41 percent of respondents said that the most important problem facing the nation was war/foreign policy/terrorism. The economy represented the top issue for only 26 percent of respondents.
At the Democratic convention in Boston, Kerry sought to put the defense issue to rest.
"We will provide troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives - and win the battle," he said in his acceptance speech.
Republicans dismissed the convention as an "extreme makeover."
Beyond past voting records, there is little for either defense analysts or voters to go on. Kerry has yet to specify exactly what programs he'd support.
But some differences have emerged between the two candidates: on troop size and national missile defense.
The Kerry campaign has stressed a need for an additional 40,000 troops. A Kerry administration also would reformulate the force mix by adding special-operations and civil-affairs units.
Both the House and Senate defense authorization bills would increase troop levels - the former by 39,000, the latter by 20,000. But so far, the administration opposes the congressional plans as a threat to modernization accounts.
Additional troops can be expensive, adding to personnel costs that already threaten to eat into defense procurement and research and development. Spending on healthcare, for instance, jumped from $15.7 billion in 2004 to $18 billion in the recently approved 2005 budget.
"Based on his pronouncements to date, Kerry would seem to be looking at investing a lot in personnel, which could mean a redeployment" of modernization accounts, said Jay Behuncik, a former Defense Appropriations Subcommittee aide to former Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.). Behuncik is now the senior defense analyst at Washington Analysis, a D.C.-based firm that advises investment firms on national policy issues.
To pay for more troops without increasing the budget, Kerry proposes cuts to one of the president's biggest priorities: the $53 billion National Missile Defense (NMD) system.
Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank, said Kerry's advisers have discussed reducing NMD spending by one-third, or just over $3 billion a year.
That would pay for roughly half of the increase in troop strength, which Thompson said could total between $5 billion to $8 billion a year.
"Forty thousand more troops is easily doable" even under Kerry's "revenue neutral" budgetary restraint, Thompson said.
The company most immediately hurt would be Boeing - the "lead integrator" for the NMD program. The Bush reelection team has sought to score what political capital it can from that admission.
At an Aug. 17 stop at a Philadelphia Boeing defense plant - in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which he lost in 2000 - Bush told workers that critics of the system were "living in the past."
Kerry advisers say their candidate supports missile defense, but not at the expense of more troops. Thompson said the technological challenges of such a system, along with the fact that 10 missile interceptors are already in the ground, could provide the political cover needed to slow development.
Kerry has provided only general information about the type of "leap ahead" technologies that he does favor. These include efforts to "digitize" Army divisions, programs that support advanced communications and information technologies, and procurement of precision weapons.
Kerry's defense plan specifically notes support for "directed energy" weapons that can incapacitate a threat without killing it.
Kerry has criticized the Bush administration for not transforming the military quickly enough from a force designed to take on the Soviet Union to one that faces the "asymmetrical" threat of terrorism.
But analysts said that Kerry - like Bush - would face the twin limits of available technology and backroom politics.
"There is not a single program out there that isn't behind schedule and overbudget," said Christopher Hellman, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, describing the difficulty involved in constructing complex weapons systems.
The Army, for instance, recently delayed the fielding date of a related leap-ahead technology program, the Future Combat System - a futuristic mix of communications and manned and unmanned ground and aerial vehicles that will replace tanks - by two years, until 2014.
A bigger barrier to technology requirements is a reluctance to do things differently, Hellman said.
"All bureaucracies are slow to change, and the military is a bureaucracy unlike any other," he said. "It's very hard to get services to look at new ways of doing things."
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U.S. and Russia Still Dominate Arms Market, but World Total Falls
August 30, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/international/europe/30weapons.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 - The United States and Russia continued to dominate the global arms market last year, especially when measured in weapons deals to developing nations, although the total value of arms sales worldwide tumbled for the third consecutive year, according to a new Congressional study.
The United States maintained its lead in worldwide weapons sales in 2003, signing deals worth more than $14.5 billion, or 56.7 percent of all arms agreements, up from $13.6 billion in 2002, the study showed.
Russia ranked second, signing agreements worth $4.3 billion, or 16.8 percent of all global arms sales deals in 2003. That figure was down from nearly $6 billion in 2002.
Germany was the third largest merchant in the global arms market for 2003, signing deals worth $1.4 billion.
The report, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations," is published each year by the Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress. The unclassified study is considered the most authoritative compilation of statistics on global sales of conventional weapons that is available to the public.
The study, nearly 90 pages of statistics and analysis, offers glimpses into the speculative and secret world of missile proliferation by North Korea.
Between 1996 and 1999, no surface-to-surface missiles were delivered to developing nations by the United States, Russia, China or European arms manufacturers. But 30 such missiles were delivered during that period by a state classified by the report as "Other," a category that includes North Korea, Israel and South Africa. Between 2000 and 2003, 20 more surface-to-surface missiles were delivered by the nations in that category, according to the study.
Although the report does not identify the country that manufactured and delivered the weapons, Pentagon analysts say the missile proliferation statistics almost certainly refer to North Korea.
Of those 50 missiles, 10 were delivered in Asia, and 40 to the Middle East. The report does not identify the recipients of the missiles.
According to the study, the value of all weapons transfer agreements worldwide was more than $25.6 billion in 2003, the third consecutive year that the dollar total for global arms deals declined. When measured in dollars adjusted for inflation to give an accurate comparison to the $25.6 billion figure, the value of global arms agreements has steadily fallen, from $41 billion in 2000.
"Nonetheless, the developing world continues to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by conventional weapons suppliers," Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in national defense at the research service, wrote in his introduction to the study.
In 2003, arms transfer agreements to developing countries topped $13.7 billion, or 53.6 percent of all weapons deals worldwide. This was a notable decrease from the $17.4 billion total in 2002.
Of those arms deals with developing countries, the United States signed deals for more than $6.2 billion, or about 45.4 percent, while Russia signed for $3.9 billion, or 23.4 percent of the sales in 2003.
Mr. Grimmett's research found that "numerous developing nations have reduced their weapons purchases primarily due to their lack of sufficient funds to pay for such weaponry," according to the study. "Even those prospective arms purchasers in the developing world with significant financial assets have exercised restraint and caution before embarking upon new and costly weapons procurement endeavors," he wrote.
What Mr. Grimmett termed "the unsettled state of the global economy" prompted a number of developing nations to focus on upgrading their existing arsenals rather than signing deals to purchase new weapons systems.
Fewer large-scale arms purchases were being made by the wealthier oil nations in the Middle East, whose earlier buying sprees contributed to a bull market in weapons when Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a regional threat. The report said it remained uncertain whether the Persian Gulf states would now perceive a potentially hostile Iran as a new motivation to improve their arsenals.
Some relatively large arms purchases were made by developing nations in Asia, according to the report.
Between 2000 and 2003, China signed arms deals to acquire $9.3 billion in weapons. After China, the nations that signed the highest-value weapons deals during that period were, in order, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, India, Israel, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore and Kuwait, according to the report.
Evidence of the missile trade outlined in the study came into public view in December 2002, when a North Korean cargo ship was halted and boarded off the Horn of Africa by crews from two Spanish warships. Fifteen Scud missiles were found hidden in the hold. But the ship and its cargo were allowed to sail on to Yemen when officials determined that no treaties had been violated.
North Korea has a long record of aiding both Iran and Pakistan with their missile programs, according to American government officials.
-------- business
Contracts Awarded
Washington Technology
Washington Post
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45440-2004Aug29?language=printer
EPlus Inc. of Herndon won a four-year, $94 million contract from the Pennsylvania General Services Department to provide computer peripherals.
DRS Technologies Inc. of Parsippany, N.J., won a $9.6 million subcontract from Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda to provide launch control electronics to the Navy.
Lear Siegler Services Inc. of Annapolis and Lockheed Martin won spots on the Army's 10-year, $2 billion Aviation Joint Administrative Management Support Services contract. Other companies selected for the contract were DynCorp Technical Services Inc. of Fort Worth, L-3 Communications Corp. of New York and Sikorsky Support Services Inc. of Stratford, Mass. The companies will compete with each other for orders.
Lockheed Martin won a 10-year, $213 million contract from the U.S. Strategic Command to develop the new architecture and functions for the Integrated Strategic Planning and Analysis Network, a mission planning and execution system.
ManTech International Corp. of Fairfax won a five-year, $3.3 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency to design, develop and implement a national security information program.
Northrop Grumman Information Technology of Herndon won a 10-year, $408 million contract from the Army to provide battle command and training support.
SRA International Inc. of Fairfax won a five-year, $20 million contract from the Defense Department to support the Defense Manpower Data Center with survey research and statistical analysis.
Xacta Corp. of Ashburn will supply security compliance and risk management software to the National Archives and Records Administration. The value of the three-year contract was not released.
TAMSCO of Calverton won a $30 million contract from the CECOM Acquisition Center at Fort Monmouth, N.J., for satellite communication spares and service for five years.
Electronic Data Systems Inc. of Herndon won a $7.2 million contract from the Pentagon Renovation and Construction Program Office to provide additional Pentagon sites on the metropolitan and wide-area networks.
ExxonMobil Fuels Marketing Co. of Fairfax won a $70.8 million contract from the Defense Energy Support Center for fuel.
Ducom Inc. of Silver Spring won a $1.5 million contract from the Army for research and development.
International City/County Management Association of Washington won a $2.3 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Avionics Specialties Inc. of Earlysville won a $1 million contract from the Air Force for essential repair.
Logistics Management Resources Inc. of Prince George won a $5 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
ASM Research Inc. of Fairfax won a $75 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
The Environmental Co. of Charlottesville won a $2.2 million contract from the Navy for environmental engineering services for the Naval Systems Commands and Operating Forces.
Analytical Services and Materials Inc. of Hampton won a $39 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for technology for aerospace vehicles.
America's Development Foundation of Alexandria won a $42.9 million contract from the Agency for International Development for the support of the Development of Civil Society and the Media in Iraq.
Technical and Management Service of Beltsville won a $30 million contract from the Army for miscellaneous communication equipment.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $1.7 million contract from the Army for the MX 10130D Option.
Kleimann Communication Group Inc. of Washington won a $5.05 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
CODA Research Inc. of Silver Spring won a $93.9 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services for knockout mice and databases.
DAI/Nathan Group-Croatia LLC of Bethesda won a $19.2 million contract from the Agency for International Development for the Croatia Small and Micro Enterprise Project.
Abacus Technology Corp. of Chevy Chase won a $71.4 million contract from the Air Force for Command, Control, Communications and Computer (C4) Services for Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Synthesis Partners LLC of Reston won a $2 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Buccaneer Computer Systems and Service Inc. of Warrenton won a $2.3 million contract from the Defense Information Systems Agency for infrastructure support.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $4.3 million contract from the Army for notice of award under BPA W15P7T-04-A-J208, Call Order 0002.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $2.6 million contract from the Army for notice of award under BPA W15P7T-04-A-J208, Call Order 0001.
Pressure Systems Inc. of Hampton won a $6.8 million contract from the General Services Administration for instruments and laboratory equipment.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
-------- china
Taiwan Cancels War Games, Mirrors China Move -Papers
Mon Aug 30, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6107614
TAIPEI - Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has asked the military to call off annual war games in a goodwill gesture aimed at mirroring China's cancellation of its military drills, newspapers said on Tuesday.
China had withdrawn about 3,000 soldiers from a military exercise on the southeastern island of Dongshan, which faces Taiwan, prompting speculation that Beijing had scrapped plans for joint-force drills, the Taiwan defense ministry said on Monday.
"Regardless of whether Communist China was sending out a goodwill gesture, our side must show goodwill," Chen was quoted as telling reporters on board a plane to Hawaii on Monday night, according to the mass-circulation China Times.
Chen met Taiwan Defense Minister Lee Jye earlier on Monday and told him to cancel the Han Kuang, or Chinese Glory, live fire drills that were scheduled for Sept. 9, the paper said.
The defense minister and presidential office were not immediately available for comment.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to attack if the self-governing island declares formal independence.
Tensions have simmered since the independence-leaning Chen won a second four-year term in March, exacerbated by reports that both sides were holding their annual war games this summer.
A China-backed Hong Kong newspaper said in mid-July that Beijing had kicked off week-long, joint-force drills on Dongshan with 18,000 troops taking part. But a spokesman for Taiwan's defense ministry said large-scale exercises never took place.
A spokesman for China's military said on Monday that he knew nothing about an exercise on Dongshan or if one had been canceled.
-------- iraq
U.S. Envoy Proposes Shift of Aid to Iraqi Security and Jobs
August 30, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/international/middleeast/30CND-SPEN.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 - The new American ambassador in Iraq, concerned about the problems of unemployed Iraqis and by attacks on the country's oil fields, has urged the Bush administration to shift money away from infrastructure improvements and use it to improve security and job opportunities, Bush administration officials said today.
The officials said that under a proposal submitted last week by Ambassador John D. Negroponte, more than $3.3 billion in aid that had been set aside for improvements in Iraq's utilities, electricity, water and sewage needed to be spent for other purposes to quickly demonstrate results that could be seen by discontented Iraqis.
The recommended policy shift, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is to be discussed at an interagency meeting as early this week. Administration officials said that Mr. Negroponte's suggestions also needed to be discussed with budget officials in Congress, which appropriated $18 billion for Iraq's reconstruction last year.
"The recommendations are the result of a review that Negroponte did even before he arrived in Baghdad," a State Department official said. "He's reached the conclusion that a lot of the infrastructure improvements that Iraq needs simply cannot go forward unless the security situation is improved."
Of the money that is proposed to be shifted, $1.8 billion is to help pay for 45,000 new Iraqi police officers, 16,000 new border patrol officers, 99 new border outposts and an additional 20 Iraqi National Guard battalions. A battalion is about 1,000 people. On top of these expenditures, money is proposed for training and equipment.
An additional $140 million is proposed for the purpose of providing assistance for elections that are to be held at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. The United Nations is supposed to be in charge of arranging for the elections, but an administration official said there was a growing feeling the United Nations may not have the resources to do the job.
At the time of the American handover of power to a newly sovereign government in Iraq in late June, American officials said one of their greatest disappointments during the occupation after the ouster of Saddam Hussein was the failure to spend reconstruction money rapidly enough.
Of the $18 billion appropriated by Congress following the end of major combat, only about $600 million had actually been spent on contracts with companies hired to rebuild Iraq.
As a result, just before the transfer of power, the occupation shifted $2.5 billion in Iraqi oil revenues, which were nominally under control of the Iraqi oil and finance ministries, to construction projects that would provide a quick payoff to Iraqis increasingly skeptical about American intentions.
On a visit to Baghdad this summer, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Americans at the new embassy that he wanted thorough review of procedures on spending. Aides to Mr. Powell said that more specifically, he wanted to know why there had been so many delays.
Administration officials say the delays were a result of many factors, including cumbersome contracting regulations imposed by the Congress and a heightened sensitivity over the fact that early in the occupation several contracts were awarded without competitive bidding to Halliburton, the company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
When they went into Iraq, many administration development experts approached the aid programs in a traditional way. The idea was that improvement of power generation capacity, electricity lines, water and sewage would be "precursors for larger economic investments" down the road, an administration official said.
But that traditional view ran into the problems that were hitting Iraq with the spread of the anti-American insurgency. Rebels were also attacking oil fields, making it clear that without security it made little sense to keep spending money to improve oil production equipment.
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Iraqi Cleric Calls Cease - fire After Bloody Uprising
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered his militia to end attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces and will soon unveil plans to pursue his goals through politics rather than conflict, aides said on Monday.
Iraq's interim government has been pressuring Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia launched two bloody uprisings in Iraq this year, to renounce violence and to enter the political arena ahead of elections due to be held in January.
``The Mehdi Army is now turning to peaceful struggle. We will have to see in the future -- that could change. But now it is peaceful,'' Sadr aide Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sudani told Reuters.
``Moqtada will declare his participation in Iraq's political process. He will not participate directly in elections but he will appoint and back someone from his side or elsewhere.''
Sadr's fighters battled U.S. and Iraqi forces in the holy city of Najaf for three weeks this month until the country's most revered Shi'ite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, returned from his London hospital bed on Thursday to broker a peace deal.
The deal only covered Najaf and sporadic clashes between Sadr's fighters and U.S.-led forces continued in other Shi'ite areas, including the sprawling Sadr City slum in Baghdad.
``Due to the situation in Najaf and the provinces ... we call on all members of the Mehdi Army to cease fire unless in self-defense, and to be patient until the political program which Sadr's followers are planning is revealed,'' Sadr aide Sheikh Ali Smeisim told Lebanon's al-Manar television in Najaf.
FORMIDABLE FOE
Sadr's call for an end to violence will ease the pressure on the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, which had struggled to contain the uprising until Sistani's intervention.
But Sadr will be a formidable political opponent. His fiery denunciations of Iraq's government and the presence of U.S.-led troops have earned him widespread support among impoverished Shi'ites impatient with Iraq's Shi'ite clerical establishment.
Shi'ites make up the majority of Iraq's population and were long oppressed by Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. Poorer Shi'ites say their hopes that life would improve after Saddam was toppled have not materialized, and many have flocked to Sadr's banner.
Allawi is also trying to quell a Sunni Muslim insurgency and to bring cities like Falluja, Ramadi and Samarra under control.
Falluja is a particular problem -- U.S. forces pulled out in May, turning security over to an Iraqi force after weeks of fighting that killed hundreds and outraged many Iraqis. The city is now largely in the control of insurgents.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Allawi said he had held talks with guerrillas to try to end the insurgency.
``I am meeting them and telling them there is one thing to do: It is the respect of law, the rule of law. If you want to use violence, we will face you violently and suppress you -- and we will bring you to justice,'' he was quoted as saying.
HOSTAGE CRISIS
The Arabic Al Jazeera television station said militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq had given France another 24 hours to agree to their demands and scrap a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools.
A video showing Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot was broadcast just after a previous deadline for the ban had expired. Chesnot said in remarks translated into Arabic that the two might ``die at any time.''
France has rejected the demand and dispatched Foreign Minister Michel Barnier to the Middle East to try to win their release through rallying support in Iraq and the region.
``We will continue come what may to follow all contacts ... and obtain the release of these people,'' Barnier said in Cairo.
The crisis stunned France which waged a high-profile campaign to oppose the U.S.-led war in Iraq and because of this considered itself safe from militant attack. France also opposed the 1990-2003 economic sanctions on Iraq.
Chesnot of Radio France Internationale and Malbrunot, who writes for the dailies Le Figaro and Ouest France, disappeared on Aug. 20 on their way from Baghdad to Najaf. The group holding them has already killed another captive, Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, after Rome refused to pull its troops out of Iraq.
In comments in the French newspaper Le Monde on Monday, Allawi said despite France's position that it did not want war, it would ``soon have to fight against terrorists.''
The French Foreign Ministry criticized the comment saying, ``France, which has itself been a victim of terrorist attacks, leads unrelentingly a determined action against this plague.''
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Negroponte Wants More Funds for Iraqi Security - - WSJ
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-security-negroponte.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq wants to shift $3.37 billion in aid earmarked for water, sewage and electricity projects in the country to efforts to improve Iraq's security and oil output and create more jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Ambassador John Negroponte, who took his post in June, issued his request in a cable last week to State Department officials, the newspaper said, citing unnamed U.S. officials familiar with the cable's contents. The money is part of $18.4 billion in reconstruction aid approved by Congress approved last November.
The proposal represents the State Department's first attempt to put its stamp on American reconstruction in Iraq since the Defense Department ceded authority to Negroponte in July, the newspaper said.
It said the changes might draw opposition from contractors that would lose money from such a reapportionment, as well as Iraqis in many parts of the country who want their water and power restored. Much of the money for rebuilding electric and water facilities has not been spent, so some of the transferred funds will probably come from contractors that have been awarded but remain at an early stage, the newspaper said.
A spokesman for Negroponte, Robert Callahan, declined to discuss the plan with the newspaper, but confirmed the ambassador sent the cable, which was being discussed by officials from various agencies.
More than $1.8 billion of the money would be used to improve Iraqi security, including the addition of 45,000 police, 16,000 national guard troops and 16,000 border guards, the newspaper said. Senior officials in President Bush's administration will meet this week to discuss forwarding the plan for the required Congressional approval, it said.
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Iraqi Premier Meets Militants, Pushes Amnesty
Allawi Has Held Talks in Private
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44617-2004Aug29.html
BAGHDAD, Aug. 29 -- Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said Sunday that he had held private meetings with representatives of insurgent groups from the restive cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra to persuade them to accept a government amnesty offer.
Allawi said the meetings, which began shortly after he assumed office in late June, have been intended to split the insurgency by luring lower-ranking members away from harder-core elements. Although he said he has not reached agreement with any of the groups, he insisted that some of the representatives are "changing horses . . . and taking the amnesty seriously."
The meetings, some of which have occurred at Allawi's private home outside the highly fortified zone that houses the Iraqi government, are a risky and unconventional form of back-channel diplomacy. But they represent the most significant effort yet to address the insurgency through political rather than military means.
"I am meeting with them. Fallujah. Ramadi. I am talking to the people there, and we are reaching out to them, to tribes, to guys who were in military and security [services]," Allawi said in an interview with a half-dozen foreign newspaper correspondents. " 'There is an amnesty,' I'm telling them. 'Make use of it.' "
For all of his feisty promises to crush the insurgency with military force, Allawi appears to have concluded that forging peace deals with enemies may be better for him -- and his country.
A three-week confrontation with rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr in the holy city of Najaf was resolved on Friday after Allawi halted a U.S. military offensive and permitted the country's top Shiite leader to meet with Sadr. In a one-hour meeting, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani persuaded Sadr to order his militia to vacate a Shiite shrine and accept a set of conditions that mirrored the government's demands.
There were signs on Sunday that a peace agreement was within reach in the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, a stronghold of Moqtada Sadr's that has been wracked by violence for the past month and was not covered by Friday's deal in Najaf. After 10 people died in fighting in Sadr City on Saturday, a group of tribal sheiks allied with Sadr met with a U.S. military officer and an Iraqi police commander to hammer out a cease-fire deal.
An official with Sadr's political office, Ali Yassiri, said the talks were productive and would continue on Monday. "All the indications are that we will reach a positive step," he said.
Sadr's representatives are pushing for an arrangement similar to the one implemented in Najaf: Armed militiamen would leave the streets in exchange for a pullout of U.S. forces, leaving Iraqi police to maintain order.
But Yassiri said a disagreement remained over what would become of the weapons used by Sadr's militiamen. Sadr officials insist the firearms used by the militiamen are personal items that should be returned to their homes, while the U.S. military and the Iraqi police want all the weapons to be surrendered.
Near the northern city of Mosul, 37 civilians were injured on Sunday when insurgents attacked a military convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, the U.S. military command said in a statement.
In southern Iraq, saboteurs blew up a cluster of oil pipelines in the third major attack on the oil infrastructure in four days, reducing the country's crude exports to 500,000 barrels a day, less than a third of the average production volume, an official with the state-run South Oil Co. told the Associated Press.
The nihilistic nature of the oil sabotage appeared to baffle Allawi. "They don't have any reason for this," he said with a sigh. Unlike the insurgents, the prime minister does not view the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as occupiers, but as the invited guests of his government. He said he found it difficult to comprehend what the insurgents wanted to achieve.
"They are not knowing how to express themselves but through violence and through violent behavior," he said. "We are trying to talk to them face-to-face and assure them that we are not here as Saddam [Hussein] to stay in power. There is a mandate for a short time. We are trying to get the country back on its feet, on the road to recovery."
In the latest attempt to get his message across to his enemies, Allawi said he met on Saturday with a delegation of 11 senior representatives from Samarra, a city about 65 miles north of Baghdad that has been roiled by insurgent attacks.
He said he posed "a really simple question" to the men from Samarra. "Tell us what you want, tell us exactly," he said he told the group. "If you need money, wait and you will have your jobs and start earning your money. The economic cycle will start. If you want to be rulers of this country, wait for the elections. . . . If you want to get the Americans out, fine. Do so, but have the consensus of the people in a proper way, not by forcing them."
Allawi did not identify the people with whom he met. He described them as not "the hard-core criminals" but as "people on the fringes who are disillusioned."
He insisted the meetings were not negotiations but opportunities for him to make a pitch to skeptics. "I am meeting them and telling them there is one thing to do: It is the respect of law, the rule of law," he said. "If you want to use violence, we will face you violently and suppress you -- and we will bring you to justice."
It is not clear how many people -- if any -- have taken up the government's amnesty offer. The offer is limited to people who have not directly participated in fatal attacks, limiting the number of eligible insurgents. Some Iraqi leaders had sought a broader amnesty, but U.S. officials, particularly the new American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, insisted that insurgents who killed Americans should not be pardoned.
Even if he has not been able to persuade insurgents to switch sides, Allawi said he believed he had made headway. In his meeting with the group from Samarra, "I said to them, and to [delegations from] Ramadi and Fallujah, 'Okay, for the sake of argument, let me assume that the multinational forces will leave. What do you think will happen?' You know what they answered? I swear to God, they said: 'Catastrophe. Iraq will be dismembered.' "
He paused for moment and then offered a bit of analysis. "When you squeeze them, then you put them to the corner," he said, "these are the answers."
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U.S. May Shift Billions for Iraq Security
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47073-2004Aug30.html
WASHINGTON - The State Department is considering whether $3.34 billion intended for public works projects in Iraq should be used instead to bolster security, a State Department official said Monday.
The money would be part of $18.4 billion Congress approved last year for rebuilding Iraq. Though the Bush administration said then that the money was needed urgently, little has been spent because of bureaucratic delays and security problems.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, has recommended to State Department officials that the $3.34 billion be reallocated from water, sewage and electricity projects. If security is improved, oil production could be increased, eventually making more money available for reconstruction, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Negroponte seeks to add 45,000 police, 16,000 border guards and 20 new national guard battalions of 700 to 800 men each.
The proposed shift in funding was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
Any change would need the support of the White House and Congress, where such a request could renew the election-year debate about President Bush's prewar planning. Many Democrats and some Republicans say the Bush administration was overly optimistic that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators and didn't recognize the threats that would remain after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled.
The $18.4 billion was part of an $87 billion package Bush signed on Nov. 6, mostly for Iraq and Afghanistan. When the proposal was presented to Congress, administration officials said emergency funding for reconstruction was as urgently needed as money for military operations.
"Every day that the Iraqis do not get power, do not get water, do not get sewage treatment is a day when their quality of life is such that they're less inclined to view us as liberators and more inclined to view us as occupiers, and that also increases the danger to our men and women," L. Paul Bremer, then head of the U.S. occupation authority, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last September.
That package was shaped mostly by the Defense Department, which was overseeing reconstruction as well as military activities at the time. The State Department has become the main agency overseeing reconstruction projects since the June 28 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi government.
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Talks Go On in Iraq; Aide Says Cleric Asks Fighters to Disarm
August 30, 2004
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/international/middleeast/30CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Aug. 30 - A top aide to Moktada al-Sadr indicated today that the rebel Shiite cleric is considering a future in politics rather than warfare as the American-backed Iraqi government and the cleric's representatives continued talks on the future of Mr. Sadr's armed militia.
Officials of the interim government and the Sadr organization were meeting late tonight in pursuit of a peace plan for the vast, explosive Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City. If achieved, a settlement in this Sadr stronghold would set an important precedent and might open Mr. Sadr's way to electoral politics.
At the same time, causing ripples of both hope and skepticism here, a top assistant to Mr. Sadr said today that the cleric was developing a political program and that he had instructed his militia fighters around the country to hold their fire for now.
"We call on all members of the Mahdi Army to cease fire except in self-defense, and to be patient until the political program which Sadr's followers are planning is revealed," the aide, Sheik Ali Smeism, told a Lebanese television station, according to the Reuters news agency.
Three weeks of ferocious combat between Mr. Sadr's supporters and American troops in Najaf ended last week when Mr. Sadr agreed that his fighters would leave that holy city.
But a question still facing Iraq, and the country's divided Shiite majority, was whether Mr. Sadr will join in the nation's emerging electoral politics or keep fighting the Americans and the interim government with his ragtag army of devout, still well-armed followers.
Whatever his goals, Mr. Sadr's ability to forge a new path may well depend on the outcome of the talks, centering on the disposition of Mahdi army fighters and weapons in the Baghdad slum that is home to some 2.5 million Shiite Muslims and has been a scene of frequent deadly clashes.
"All the Iraqi people are waiting to see what will happen in these talks," said Sheik Kareem al-Bakhabi, who heads the tribal leaders of Sadr City and is negotiating with the government alongside Mr. Sadr's personal envoy.
"We hope the government will compromise with us because this may be the last chance," Mr. Bakhabi said in an interview this afternoon at one of Mr. Sadr's Baghdad offices.
The sticking point, Mr. Bakhabi and others said, was the demand by the government and the United States Army that the militias hand in their weapons, especially rocket-propelled grenades and bomb materials with which they have repeatedly bloodied American patrols.
Government and Sadr representatives were still talking late tonight. The main negotiator for the government has been the national security adviser, Mowafaq Rubayi, but Prime Minister Allawi has been closely involved, officials say. After spending hours with Mr. Sadr's agents on Sunday, American commanders said they had stayed out of the talks, clearly hoping to portray any agreement as among Iraqis.
Both sides say they would like to see Mr. Sadr's irregular fighters return to homes and jobs, to see reconstruction efforts blossom and to allow the government to regain a measure of authority in Sadr City. Heaps of rotting garbage and pools of leaking sewage plague the neighborhood and a majority of men are unemployed.
The government has already indicated that as part of a total deal, it is willing to offer a legal amnesty for Mahdi fighters and to keep American forces out of the neighborhood, as Iraqi police take over street patrols, Sadr officials said.
Mr. Sadr's aides say it is unreasonable to expect fighters to give up their rifles because these are privately owned. "Don't most families in America keep a weapon?" Mr. Bakhabi asked.
It appeared that the government might relent on collection of all rifles but serious disagreement continued this evening over the heavier weapons held by the militias.
Mr. Bakhabi declined to describe the two sides' negotiating positions but said, "If we gave our rocket-propelled grenades to the government but then they broke their promises, we couldn't get them back again."
Today, the United States Army's First Cavalry thrust itself back into Sadr City, after a day's respite. On the central avenue, an Abrams tank and four Bradley fighting vehicles sat ominously as dozens of Army marksmen peered from adjacent rooftops.
But the streets still bustled and the militias did not fire rocket-propelled grenades or detonate roadside bombs, as they often have. Some fighters who instead spent the day directing traffic said they had been instructed by leaders not to attack the Americans, despite what they regarded as a severe provocation.
Armed fighters are seldom visible on the streets, but there is little doubt who is in control. When a stranger shows up, a neighborhood captain of the Sadr organization quickly appears, asking who are you, and do you have permission to be here? A signed note from a Sadr official or a local tribal leader is usually enough to pass muster.
Everywhere are posters depicting Moktada al-Sadr, often with his revered father, a far more senior and learned cleric who was killed by Saddam Hussein. Local residents say that only perhaps half the populace strongly supports the young rebel but that many more are quite sympathetic, feeling that he was attacked by the Americans without good reason.
In palavers with a foreigner today, several traditional tribal leaders in Sadr City - people whose influence may have been undercut by the upstart cleric and his stern militia - were reluctant to criticize Mr. Sadr. They expressed the wish above all that the Americans would clear out and let Iraqis solve their own problems.
"The Americans come in here shooting and it has made the people want revenge," said Sheik Jadoa Abdul al-Masary, a clan leader in the northeast corner of Sadr City.
"My basic advice to the Americans is to leave this area," he said, furiously fingering a string of plastic beads. "There's no oil, no gold, just poor families. What's the reason for coming in here and making trouble?"
Sheik Jowad Maawi al-Maham, the elderly tribal head of a nearby neighborhood, spent today in a long tent put up on a side street, greeting dozens of family heads who came to express condolences for an elderly relative's death.
"Our people were happy to see Saddam go," Mr. Maham said. "But after they entered Iraq, the Americans changed the deal."
He added: "They used excessive force and called the Iraqi people terrorists. We haven't seen security or democracy or reconstruction."
He fully understood, he said, why young men from his neighborhood had rushed to Najaf in recent weeks to fight the invaders and defend Moktada al-Sadr.
But as the sheik walked foreign visitors to their car, a telling exchange occurred, perhaps a hint of power jostling to come in Sadr City and other Shiite parts of Iraq.
A young Sadr captain rushed up and peremptorily asked the visitors what they were doing here.
The sheik angrily shoved the man away, shouting, "Leave them alone, these are my guests!"
-------- israel / palestine
Israel planes violate Lebanon air space
August 30, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040830-073602-3722r.htm
Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 30 -- Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese air space Monday, breaking the sound barrier over south and north Lebanon, official reports said.
An army statement said "four Israeli planes flew over south Lebanon and two of them continued further north over the region of Shikka in north Lebanon."
The statement did not say if the intruding planes were met with anti-aircraft fire by Hezbollah and Lebanese army gunners deployed in south Lebanon.
Israeli air force violates Lebanese air space frequently, prompting Lebanon to complain regularly with the United Nations to put pressure on Israel to stop its violations.
----
Officials worry about effects of spy accusations
August 30, 2004
By Abraham Rabinovich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040829-100740-2406r.htm
JERUSALEM - Israeli officials yesterday said reports that a Pentagon analyst passed classified information to Israel seriously could damage the nation's image in America, even as they denied any role in such an operation.
"There is no doubt that these publications are damaging, [and] even though they are false, they are damaging," said Natan Sharansky, who as minister for diaspora affairs is responsible for the effects of anti-Semitism on Jews worldwide.
American officials said this weekend that the FBI has spent more than a year investigating whether a Pentagon analyst funneled highly classified material to Israel concerning U.S. policy toward Iran.
Both Israel and the United States are worried that Iran's nuclear-energy program is a front for an effort to develop nuclear weapons.
"I hope [the investigation] is all a mistake or misunderstanding of some kind," Mr. Sharansky told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
Mentioning "the Pentagon and the CIA" specifically, Mr. Sharansky suggested that the probe might have resulted from "a rivalry between different bodies."
Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom said the Israeli government laid down strict guidelines to prohibit espionage against its major ally after the arrest in 1985 of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard, a former official in U.S. Naval Intelligence, is serving a life sentence in the United States.
Although the two countries have very close defense and political ties, the American intelligence community has been sensitive to the possibility of Israeli intelligence penetration ever since Pollard's arrest.
With the issue dominating Israeli public-affairs shows yesterday, Mr. Yatom pointed out that Israeli and American officials and academics have hundreds of formal and informal meetings every year.
"It could be that someone [in the United States] innocently did something that is forbidden by American law. But there was no mobilization of agents by Israel or instructions given to them about what to look for, as with Pollard," he said.
Mr. Yatom said he hoped the latest episode would prove to be no more serious than "an unnecessary initiative on the part of an American official."
Another former senior Mossad official, Uzi Arad, said he had met with the Pentagon analyst named in press reports as the suspect, Larry Franklin, along with other Pentagon officials as part of his ongoing contacts in the United States.
"Our two countries have open relations," he said. "Collegial relations. It's clear that when we get together we don't talk about the Olympics."
Nevertheless, the investigation provides ammunition to those who charge that Israel has undue influence in the United States and that it influenced Washington to undertake the war in Iraq - a charge dismissed as absurd by both the Bush administration and Israel.
The episode also has renewed concerns about conflicted loyalties among American Jews, which were brought to the fore by the Pollard affair.
Although Mr. Franklin is not Jewish, the purported mole is suspected of having passed on secrets regarding American policy on Iran to two members of the pro-Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who in turn passed them on to an Israeli official.
Senior Jewish officials in the Bush administration - including Mr. Franklin's boss, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith - also have been accused of promoting the war with Iraq as a way to help Israel.
Mr. Arad seemed to suggest in an interview with Israeli radio that the press reports were deliberately leaked to hurt Israel's supporters in Washington.
"They pointed out in which office [Mr. Franklin] worked," he said. "They pointed at people like Doug Feith or other defense officials who have long been under attack within the American bureaucracy."
----
Sharon Urges Faster Plan to Leave Settlements
August 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Settlements.html
JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told senior Cabinet ministers Monday he wants to evacuate all Gaza settlements at one time instead of in three stages, officials said, reflecting a major shift in position.
At a meeting of the Security Cabinet, Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented their plan to evacuate all 21 Gaza settlements together, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Up to now, the plan was to remove the settlements in three stages. Settlers and their backers, many from Sharon's own Likud Party, oppose the withdrawal from Gaza, and a staged removal could have set the stage for months of confrontations between Gaza settlers and police.
In its session Monday, the Security Cabinet approved giving the military overall responsibility for removing the settlements, while assigning the job of taking the settlers out to the police, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
On Sunday, Israel and the World Bank concluded a round of discussions about the planned pullout, officials said.
Israel told World Bank officials it wants to destroy the houses in all Israeli settlements in Gaza, except one. The bulldozed homes would be replaced by high-rise apartment buildings for Palestinians now living in refugee camps, while the buildings in the remaining settlement, which was not named, would be used as a hospital.
Local World Bank officials could not be reached for comment on Monday.
A diplomat said countries donating aid to Palestinians have asked the bank to explore rehabilitation options for Gaza. He said a final decision on how to rebuild Gaza would be taken by a committee of major donor nations.
Other analysts said they believed the concept of buying settlements or other properties built on war-won land was unlikely to win approval.
Meanwhile, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile toward a car carrying four Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town of Jenin on Monday, but missed. The missile hit a nearby home, causing no injuries.
The apparent target was Mahmoud Abu Khalifeh, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group with ties to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The Al Aqsa group in Jenin has claimed responsibility for an Aug. 11 bombing at an Israeli roadblock in the West Bank in which two Palestinian civilians were killed.
Abu Khalifeh said he was in the car when an explosion went off nearby. "We jumped out of the car and started firing randomly," he said. "We thought that the army was nearby."
The army acknowledged the failed attempt and described the target as a "senior member of a terrorist organization in Jenin." It said in a statement that "the missile missed the target and incidentally damaged a house."
Also Monday, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails resumed a hunger strike after a weekend break. The fast began two weeks ago. The prisoners have presented a list of demands to improve their conditions, but the main thrust of the strike is a political blow against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Issa Karake, head of Palestinian prisoners' association, said inmates in Ashkelon jail, who suspended their strike on Friday pending the outcome of negotiations with prison authorities, resumed fasting Monday after the talks brought no results.
Karake said that the participation of the Ashkelon inmates meant that nearly all the 4,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons on security charges were on hunger strike.
The striking prisoners have been drinking liquids, including milk and fruit juice. Israeli officials say many prisoners never began striking, and hundreds of others have ended their fasts.
The strikers have the backing of a grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, the legendary Indian leader, who is currently touring the West Bank and urging Palestinians to adopt nonviolent means of resisting Israeli occupation.
On a visit to the Palestinian parliament Sunday, Arun Gandhi told Palestinians that pacifism could be a powerful weapon in the battle for world opinion.
"What would it look like if a group of leaders from Palestine were to lead 50,000 men, women and children in a march," he said.
"Maybe the Israeli army would shoot and kill several people, they may kill a hundred, they may kill two hundred people and that would shock the world."
--------
Palestinians Say 800 Prisoners Resume Hunger Strike
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-strike.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Around 800 Palestinian prisoners who suspended a hunger strike after winning some concessions from their Israeli jail resumed fasting Monday saying nothing had changed, their spokesman said.
The Israeli Prisons Authority denied the inmates were back on strike, saying they had food in their cells and were eating.
``They resumed (fasting) today,'' said Issa Qaraqe, head of the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, referring to 800 Palestinians in Ashkelon prison who broke their strike on Friday after saying they had reached a partial deal with its officials.
``Israel must sit with the prisoners and negotiate with them over their demands. The continuation of the strike is dangerous. Maybe there could be instances of death in the prisons and it would be a big catastrophe,'' Qaraqe said.
Around 2,800 prisoners, seen by Palestinians as symbols of resistance to Israeli occupation, have been refusing food to demand wardens stop strip searches, allow more frequent family visits, improve sanitation and install public telephones.
Israeli officials dismiss the liquids-only fast, which began on August 15 with 1,500 hunger strikers, as a ploy to secure easier communication with militant groups waging a nearly four-year-old revolt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Prisons Authority, which has denied reaching a deal with the Ashkelon hunger strikers but said it was in dialogue with them, said it was too early to say the strike had resumed.
``They refused to take meals today as some form of protest,'' an Authority spokesman said. ``But they have food in their cells from the canteen. They are eating.'' He said more than 40 hunger-striking women had also broken their fast.
Qaraqe said previously that the Ashkelon prisoners had reached a partial agreement with prison officials for a halt to strip searches and for family visits during which prisoners would be allowed to hug their children.
The prisoners had expected to hold talks with prison officials on Monday, but Qaraqe said a meeting was abruptly canceled by the Israeli side.
More than 7,000 Palestinians, excluding common criminals, are held in Israeli jails, including some who identify with Islamic militant groups sworn to Israel's destruction.
--------
Sharon Fails in Bid to Speed Up Gaza Pullout
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon failed Monday to persuade his security cabinet to speed up a Gaza withdrawal agreed in principle by the government two months ago, political sources said.
In a sign of internal political opposition Sharon faces over his plan to pull Israeli settlers and soldiers out of Gaza by the end of 2005, hard-liners in the security cabinet resisted his call to evacuate them in one fell swoop, the sources said.
The government decided in June that a Gaza pullout would be made in four stages, with separate cabinet votes required at each phase before settlements are removed.
But Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, with Sharon's backing, has been pushing to evacuate settlements all at once to reduce the prospect of prolonged clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians, as well as with any settlers who refuse to go.
Agreeing to Mofaz's proposal to have police remove settlers in operations supervised by the military, the security cabinet decided against changing the original plan to pull out in stages, the sources said.
``It's possible to carry out a phased withdrawal -- settlements will be removed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,'' Sharon quipped after several ministers voiced their opposition to amending the June decision, one source said.
Despite the setback, the sources said Sharon intended to present to lawmakers from his Likud party Tuesday a timetable for taking key decisions that would put the Gaza withdrawal in motion.
Sharon, the sources added, was determined to pursue ``disengagement'' from conflict with the Palestinians even after being shot down by Likud's executive body in his bid for a broader coalition capable of guaranteeing the plan's passage.
Likud's hard-line Central Committee voted to bar Sharon from allying with the opposition center-left Labor, which favors ceding occupied land to foster peace with Palestinians.
In fresh violence, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian near the Jewish settlement of Morag in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said. Israeli military sources said troops opened fire after spotting a man crawling toward Morag's fence.
UNFAZED
The former general Sharon, whose partial reversal from decades of promoting Jewish settlement on occupied land shocked his party but enjoys big support in opinion polls, made clear to his cabinet Monday he was unfazed by the Likud rebellion.
``Nothing is going to stop me from carrying out disengagement. Nobody can shackle my arms and legs!'' a senior confidante quoted him as saying.
Sharon wants to evacuate 8,000 settlers next year from 21 enclaves in tiny Gaza, where 1.3 million Palestinians also live.
His blueprint also entails keeping Israeli control over an arc of larger settlements in the West Bank that he considers a strategic bulwark of the Jewish state.
Palestinians, in revolt against Israeli occupation since September 2000, welcome any pullback but object to Sharon's intention to hold on to large settlement blocs in the West Bank, also built on land they want for a future state.
Political sources said Sharon wanted to test sentiment within Likud's parliamentary faction, seen as more amenable to ``disengagement'' than the hard-line Central Committee, but would not seek a vote that could boomerang against him at this stage.
Sharon hoped to submit a pullout timetable, starting with a compensation package for settlers opting to go voluntarily, to parliament by the new session in October
--------
Israelis Fire Missile at Palestinians
August 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Air-Strike.html
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) -- An Israeli helicopter fired a missile Monday toward a car carrying four Palestinian gunmen, but missed and hit a nearby home instead, the militants said.
The Israeli military declined comment.
The incident took place in the West Bank town of Jenin. There were no reports of casualties.
The gunmen in the car were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group with ties to Yasser Arafat's ruling Fatah movement. One of those in the vehicle was identified as Mahmoud Abu Khalifeh, a local Al Aqsa leader.
The Al Aqsa group in Jenin has claimed responsibility for an Aug. 11 bombing at an Israeli roadblock in the West Bank in which two Palestinian civilians were killed.
--------
Israel, Iran Trade Threats As FBI Investigates Spying
U.S. Ally Said to Have Received Documents on Tehran
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45287-2004Aug29.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 29 -- Israel and Iran traded significantly escalated threats of military attacks in recent months as the FBI investigated allegations that a Pentagon official passed secret U.S. policy information about Iran to Israeli authorities.
Israel has warned that it could launch strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities to thwart the country's advancing weapons program. In response, Iranian Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said earlier this month: "If Israel should dare to attack our nuclear installations, we will come down on its head like a heavy hammer crushing its skull."
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Israeli officials have expressed more concern about the danger Iran poses and have been more emboldened in their threats to quash it. But the espionage allegations, which surfaced Friday, prompted a wave of vehement denials, political angst and disbelief among Israeli officials, intelligence experts, diplomats and other political analysts.
"It's hard to see this as such an issue of controversy or disagreement that Israel would say, 'Break all the rules because we have to find out what they're doing,' " said Yossi Alpher, a former official in the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.
The FBI is investigating whether Lawrence A. Franklin, a career analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who specializes in Iran, gave classified information to two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, according to sources. U.S. officials said the information, which included the draft of a presidential directive on U.S. policies toward Iran, was then given to Israeli officials. AIPAC has denied any wrongdoing and said its employees were cooperating with the inquiry.
Newsweek magazine reported on its Web site Sunday that FBI agents had monitored a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and an AIPAC lobbyist at lunch nearly 18 months ago. Another American, later identified as Franklin, "walked in" during the session, according to the report. At the time the FBI was looking into possible Israeli espionage, Newsweek said.
The investigation is the second in recent months involving allegations of Israeli espionage against an ally. In July, a New Zealand court found two Israeli men, accused of being agents for the Mossad, guilty of attempting to forge New Zealand passports. Israeli officials denied that the men were members of the Mossad, but New Zealand's prime minister announced diplomatic sanctions against Israel and demanded an apology.
Michael Oren, an Israeli historian, said Israel would have very little to gain by spying on the United States "because the relationship is so open and giving."
"Israel and the United States see very much eye to eye on the Iran threat, and the intelligence cooperation is extremely close -- it's on an unprecedented level," Oren said. "Both countries perceive Iran's future acquisition of nuclear weapons as a grave threat to the region and the world, and both are committed to trying to prevent Iran from going nuclear."
For months, Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, have warned Iran that Israel was prepared to take what Mofaz called "the necessary steps" to eliminate its nuclear capability. In 1981, Israeli bombers destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in an effort to curtail then-President Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program.
In recent weeks, Israel and Iran have stepped up their rhetoric. Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani told al-Jazeera Arab television network this month that "Iran is not Iraq -- we will not sit by idly if our nuclear reactor's installations are attacked."
Israeli defense and intelligence officials have said Iran's nuclear weapons development program, coupled with its Shihab-3 missile, which is capable of striking Israel, represent the most significant threat to Israel.
In a simulated test last Friday off the Californian coast, Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, which is designed to destroy or intercept short- and medium-range missiles, failed to stop a Shihab-3 and a Syrian Scud D, according to Israeli defense officials.
Analysts also said that because of AIPAC's alleged involvement, the Franklin case, if proved, could have a more damaging impact on U.S.-Israeli relations than the case of Jonathan J. Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who admitted to spying for Israel in 1987. Analysts said the case could also have a major impact on AIPAC. The group has 65,000 members "at the forefront of the most vexing issues facing Israel today: stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, fighting terrorism and achieving peace," according to its Web site.
"The insinuation that AIPAC, an American Jewish lobby, is engaged in espionage is in some ways worse than Pollard, who as a single individual could be described as off-balance," said Alpher, the former Mossad official.
Equally damaging could be the perception that Israeli and American Jews are wielding disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy, said Oren, the historian.
"There's a convention going on in New York," he said, referring to the Republican National Convention, "and the canard has been out there for a long time that Israel and Israel's supporters and the neo-conservatives in the Defense Department have manipulated U.S. foreign policy, especially on Iraq, to serve Israeli purposes, and this would tend to substantiate that canard."
--------
Gaza Settlement Evacuation Plan Sped Up
By MARK LAVIE
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 11:04 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46356-2004Aug30?language=printer
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told senior Cabinet ministers Monday he wants to evacuate all Gaza settlements at one time instead of in three stages, officials said, reflecting a major shift in position.
At a meeting of the Security Cabinet, Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented their plan to evacuate all 21 Gaza settlements together, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Up to now, the plan was to remove the settlements in three stages. Settlers and their backers, many from Sharon's own Likud Party, oppose the withdrawal from Gaza, and a staged removal could have set the stage for months of confrontations between Gaza settlers and police.
In its session Monday, the Security Cabinet approved giving the military overall responsibility for removing the settlements, while assigning the job of taking the settlers out to the police, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
On Sunday, Israel and the World Bank concluded a round of discussions about the planned pullout, officials said.
Israel told World Bank officials it wants to destroy the houses in all Israeli settlements in Gaza, except one. The bulldozed homes would be replaced by high-rise apartment buildings for Palestinians now living in refugee camps, while the buildings in the remaining settlement, which was not named, would be used as a hospital.
Local World Bank officials could not be reached for comment on Monday.
A diplomat said countries donating aid to Palestinians have asked the bank to explore rehabilitation options for Gaza. He said a final decision on how to rebuild Gaza would be taken by a committee of major donor nations.
Other analysts said they believed the concept of buying settlements or other properties built on war-won land was unlikely to win approval.
Meanwhile, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile toward a car carrying four Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town of Jenin on Monday, but missed. The missile hit a nearby home, causing no injuries.
The apparent target was Mahmoud Abu Khalifeh, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group with ties to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The Al Aqsa group in Jenin has claimed responsibility for an Aug. 11 bombing at an Israeli roadblock in the West Bank in which two Palestinian civilians were killed.
Abu Khalifeh said he was in the car when an explosion went off nearby. "We jumped out of the car and started firing randomly," he said. "We thought that the army was nearby."
The army acknowledged the failed attempt and described the target as a "senior member of a terrorist organization in Jenin." It said in a statement that "the missile missed the target and incidentally damaged a house."
Also Monday, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails resumed a hunger strike after a weekend break. The fast began two weeks ago. The prisoners have presented a list of demands to improve their conditions, but the main thrust of the strike is a political blow against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Issa Karake, head of Palestinian prisoners' association, said inmates in Ashkelon jail, who suspended their strike on Friday pending the outcome of negotiations with prison authorities, resumed fasting Monday after the talks brought no results.
Karake said that the participation of the Ashkelon inmates meant that nearly all the 4,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons on security charges were on hunger strike.
The striking prisoners have been drinking liquids, including milk and fruit juice. Israeli officials say many prisoners never began striking, and hundreds of others have ended their fasts.
The strikers have the backing of a grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, the legendary Indian leader, who is currently touring the West Bank and urging Palestinians to adopt nonviolent means of resisting Israeli occupation.
On a visit to the Palestinian parliament Sunday, Arun Gandhi told Palestinians that pacifism could be a powerful weapon in the battle for world opinion.
"What would it look like if a group of leaders from Palestine were to lead 50,000 men, women and children in a march," he said.
"Maybe the Israeli army would shoot and kill several people, they may kill a hundred, they may kill two hundred people and that would shock the world."
--------
Israel Floats Settlement As Hospital Plan
By STEVE WEIZMAN
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 8:39 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46033-2004Aug30.html
JERUSALEM - Israel has proposed leaving a Gaza settlement intact to be used as a hospital after an Israeli pullout, and wants to sell an industrial zone on the edge of the coastal strip to international bodies, Israeli officials said.
Israel and the World Bank concluded a round of discussions about the planned pullout on Sunday, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Israel told World Bank officials it wants to destroy the houses in all Israeli settlements in Gaza, except one. The bulldozed homes would be replaced by high-rise apartment buildings for Palestinians now living in refugee camps, while the buildings in the remaining settlement, which was not named, would be used as a hospital.
Local World Bank officials could not be reached for comment on Monday.
A diplomat said countries donating aid to Palestinians have asked the bank to explore rehabilitation options for Gaza. He said a final decision on how to rebuild Gaza would be taken by a committee of major donor nations.
Other analysts said they believed the concept of buying settlements or other properties built on war-won land was unlikely to win approval.
Meanwhile, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile toward a car carrying four Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town of Jenin on Monday, but missed. The missile hit a nearby home, causing no injuries.
The apparent target was Mahmoud Abu Khalifeh, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group with ties to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The Al Aqsa group in Jenin has claimed responsibility for an Aug. 11 bombing at an Israeli roadblock in the West Bank in which two Palestinian civilians were killed.
Abu Khalifeh said he was in the car when an explosion went off nearby. "We jumped out of the car and started firing randomly," he said. "We thought that the army was nearby."
An army statement aknowledging the failed attempt described the target as a "senior member of a terrorist organization in Jenin." It added, "The missile missed the target and incidentally damaged a house."
Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails resumed a hunger strike after a weekend break. The fast began two weeks ago. The prisoners have presented a list of demands to improve their conditions, but the main thrust of the strike is a political blow against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Issa Karake, head of Palestinian prisoners' association, said inmates in Ashkelon jail, who suspended their strike on Friday pending the outcome of negotiations with prison authorities, resumed fasting Monday after the talks brought no results.
Karake said that the participation of the Ashkelon inmates meant that nearly all the 4,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons on security charges were on hunger strike.
The striking prisoners have been drinking liquids, including milk and fruit juice. Israeli officials say many prisoners never began striking, and hundreds of others have ended their fasts.
The strikers have the backing of a grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, the legendary Indian leader, who is currently touring the West Bank and urging Palestinians to adopt nonviolent means of resisting Israeli occupation.
On a visit to the Palestinian parliament Sunday, Arun Gandhi told Palestinians that pacifism could be a powerful weapon in the battle for world opinion.
"What would it look like if a group of leaders from Palestine were to lead 50,000 men, women and children in a march," he said.
"Maybe the Israeli army would shoot and kill several people, they may kill a hundred, they may kill two hundred people and that would shock the world."
-------- mideast
Lebanese Autonomy May Become U.N. Issue
By GEORGE GEDDA
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 5:38 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47072-2004Aug30.html
WASHINGTON - The United States and France are discussing whether to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution insisting that Lebanon be allowed to decide its own future without Syrian interference, a State Department official said Monday.
Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, has been seeking a constitutional amendment that would allow him to extend his term in office for another three years.
With 20,000 troops in Lebanon, Syria has been the main power broker in the country for decades.
In recent days the White House and the State Department have been expressing concern about what they contend is Syria's continuing effort to determine Lebanon's political future.
The pro-Syrian Lebanese Parliament is expected to approve a presidential term extension. Lahoud's six-year term expires on Nov. 24.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, without mentioning Syria by name, said Monday it is the view of the United States and many in Lebanon that all foreign forces should be removed from Lebanon based on a 15-year old agreement.
"We have heard a lot of voices in Lebanon standing up for the established constitution," Boucher said. "And we think the Lebanese people should be allowed to decide without influence from other parties."
At U.N. headquarters in New York, Security Council diplomats said that in addition to the United States and France, consultations were taking place among other nations on the 15-member council.
The draft resolution being discussed would demand that Syrian forces withdraw from Lebanon and reaffirm the council's support for Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, according to one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said it also would and demand free and fair elections under the Lebanese constitution and "devised without foreign interference."
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry, in a letter to the Security Council, said approval of such a resolution would be a dangerous precedent that contravened international laws and norms.
"The presence of Syrian forces in Lebanon is linked to the (1989) Taif agreement and bilateral agreements between the Syrian and Lebanese states, ... and no external power has the right to interfere in its details or impose amendments on it," it said.
The letter also rejected repeated U.S. allegations that Syria supports terrorist organizations in Lebanon.
Syria sent 40,000 troops into neighboring Lebanon in 1976, sent by the Arab League in an Arab peacekeeping force during Lebanon's civil war, which had begun in 1975. The Syrians quickly became participants in the conflict, which was to continue until 1990 and kill 150,000 people. In 1989, Syria committed to reducing its troop strength, according to an peace pact brokered by Arab diplomats in Taif, Saudi Arabia, that ended the war. The current 20,000 are what remains of the force.
Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, who heads the State Department's Middle East Bureau, is weighing the possibility of traveling to Damascus next week to deliver the U.S. message to Syrian authorities directly, a State Department official said.
The United States has been coordinating its Lebanon policy with France and Germany. On Friday, the French Foreign Ministry urged Lebanon to show "strict respect" for its constitution and suggested that no outside country should interfere with Lebanon's electoral process.
Also on Friday, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said during a visit to Beirut that it was "crucial that Lebanon be preserved as an independent and sovereign nation and state, and that all the decisions are based on the constitution and on the free will of your people."
-------- prisoners of war
Prison dog use mired in confusion
August 30, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040830-075245-4019r.htm
Washington, DC, Aug. 30 -- The use of dogs to terrify Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was a result of unclear and inaccurate communication, the Washington Post said Monday.
A cable signed by Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to U.S. Central Command last September listed several dozen strategies for extracting information from prisoners, included one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."
The text of the Sanchez cable was not included in public copies of last week's Army's report on prisoner abuse, but was obtained by The Washington Post from a government official upset by what Sanchez approved.
Several abuses were highlighted by the reports released last week -- the use of dogs to frighten detainees, the repeated stripping of detainees and the use of extended isolation and sensory deprivation. Each violated Army rules and violated Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under military occupation from threats of violence, isolation from visits by the Red Cross, and humiliating and degrading treatment, the Army report said.
----
Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds
Top Officials Did Not Make Interrogation Policies Clear
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45319-2004Aug29?language=printer
Early last September, attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq were spiking and an Army general dispatched from a military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded in a classified study that the detention of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad "does not yet set conditions for successful interrogations."
Under pressure to extract more information from the prisoners -- to "go beyond" what Army interrogation rules allowed, as an Army general later put it -- the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq sent a secret cable to his boss at U.S. Central Command on Sept. 14, outlining more aggressive interrogation methods he planned to authorize immediately.
The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."
Sanchez's order calling on police dog handlers to help intimidate detainees into talking -- a practice later seen in searing photographs -- was one of a handful of documents written by senior officials that Army officials now say helped sow the seeds of prison abuse in Iraq. They did so, according to an Army report released Wednesday, by lending credence to the idea that aggressive interrogation methods were sanctioned by officers going up the chain of command.
But the issue of using dogs is also an example of how the U.S. military's ad hoc and informal decision-making in Iraq created confusion and allowed these harsh methods to infiltrate from Afghanistan to Guantanamo and finally to Iraq, despite Bush administration contentions that detainees in each theater of conflict were subject to different rules and that Iraqis would receive the most protections.
The text of the Sanchez cable was not included in public copies of the Army's report, but was obtained by The Washington Post from a government official upset by what Sanchez approved.
The authors of the Army report did not accuse Sanchez of directly instigating abuse, and they did not cite the contents of his memo in the unclassified version. But Army Gen. Paul J. Kern -- who oversaw the drafting of the report -- said in an interview last week that Sanchez "wrote a policy which was not clear," and that by doing so, he allowed junior officers to conclude mistakenly that they were following an official policy as they stepped over a legal line.
This interpretation of the role senior officials played -- that they committed sins of omission, rather than commission, by writing ambiguous instructions and then failing to police the errant ways of subordinates -- is likely to be challenged in court, according to lawyers for some of the soldiers on trial in connection with the prison abuse.
No one above the military grade of the top intelligence commander at Abu Ghraib was legally "culpable" for the abuse, the Army report concluded. But a separate report on the abuse released Wednesday by a panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld referred to Sanchez's memo on Sept. 14 as one of several documents that led "some soldiers or contractors who committed abuse" to believe "the techniques were condoned."
Other such documents cited by officials who participated in the two probes include a December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld that authorized harsh interrogation methods for prisoners at Guantanamo, and a controversial Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President Bush that declared that fighters detained in Afghanistan were not entitled as a matter of law to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.
The Rumsfeld memo included authorization for the use of dogs; the Bush memo was cited by legal advisers to Sanchez as the basis for their determination that some Iraqi detainees were not entitled to the full legal protections provided by the Geneva Conventions, according to the independent panel. This "confusion" between interrogation rules devised for use at Guantanamo and Afghanistan and the protections mandated by international law in Iraq contributed to some of the abuse, according to the Army report's executive summary.
Kern said: "We found not culpability" among senior officers such as Sanchez, but "clear responsibility" for not deterring junior officers and enlisted men from inappropriate behavior. "They didn't clarify for those young interrogators what their responsibilities were."
Several abuses in particular are highlighted by the two reports released last week: the use of dogs to frighten detainees, the repeated stripping of detainees, and the use of extended isolation and sensory deprivation. Each clearly violated Army rules and violated Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under military occupation from threats of violence, isolation from visits by the Red Cross, and humiliating and degrading treatment, the Army report said.
The issue of using military dogs illustrates how a blizzard of memos from senior officials sowed an impression of tolerance, if not approval, for aggressive interrogations. It has been a particular embarrassment to the Pentagon since photos of dogs snarling and barking in front of cowering Iraqis -- and in one case preparing to bite a detainee -- were made public in June, about six months after soldiers there recorded the images.
It also illustrates how, as the independent panel's report concluded, the migration of lists and interrogators from one theater to another resulted in "policies approved for use on al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions, [being] applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions."
Army investigators probing the abuse in Iraq traced the initial idea of using dogs -- a technique that does not appear in the service's standard field guide -- to interrogation practices followed by U.S. intelligence officials and Special Forces teams deployed in Afghanistan. Kern said the officials there concluded that Afghans feared dogs because of religious beliefs that those bitten are unhealthy or condemned, and became convinced that this fear could be exploited to compel intelligence disclosures.
The technique migrated first from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, via Washington. In late 2002, aides to Rumsfeld -- responding to a request by officials at Guantanamo for approval of more aggressive interrogation methods -- canvassed officers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved techniques for use only at that site, which included "the use of dogs to induce stress and the removal of clothing as Counter-Resistance techniques," according to the Army report.
Rumsfeld rescinded his memo the following month, after a private protest by Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora over its sanctioning of practices in violation of international law and military regulations. The independent panel's report faulted Rumsfeld for not obtaining "a wider range of legal opinions and a more robust debate" before he approved the rules. It also said his promulgation of these guidelines -- even temporarily -- contributed "to a belief that stronger interrogation methods were needed and appropriate."
By April, after a Pentagon review, Rumsfeld approved a new list of interrogation techniques that omitted the use of dogs. But U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, meanwhile, continued to use many of the practices on Rumsfeld's Dec. 2 list, including "isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs, and implementing sleep and light deprivation," the Army report concluded.
U.S. military commanders there urged the removal of clothing on grounds that "no specific written legal prohibition existed." The Pentagon has not released details of abusive Special Forces activities in Afghanistan. But the independent panel said an unreleased Defense Department report has found "a range of abuses and causes similar in scope and magnitude" to those involving interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
In Afghanistan, these tactics were also employed by members of the Army's 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, a unit transferred to Iraq in the summer of 2003. After Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the top official at the Guantanamo prison, visited Abu Ghraib from Aug. 31 to Sept. 9 and called for more rigorous interrogations there, some of these tactics -- including the use of dogs -- were incorporated in a memo drafted by Sanchez's legal office on Sept. 10 and sent to prison interrogators.
Sanchez's legal advisers subsequently drew on both this guidance and the legal justifications in Bush's 2002 directive while drafting the Sept. 14 cable from Sanchez to Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, the independent panel's report said.
"Enclosed is the policy modeled on the one implemented for interrogation conducted at Gitmo," Sanchez said in his cable, referring to Guantanamo Bay. It authorized not only exploiting prisoners' "fear" of dogs but also the use of isolation; "sleep management"; "yelling, loud music, and light control . . . to create fear, disorient detainees and capture shock"; deception, including fake documents and reports; and "stress positions," such as forced kneeling for as many as four hours at a time.
The cable placed no restrictions on the use of dogs on "detainees" and "security internees," but said any use involving enemy prisoners of war would require Sanchez's direct approval. In fact, as Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, an intelligence official who co-wrote the Army report, said in an interview last week, the use of this narrow qualifying phrase in Sanchez's memo reflected bad "staff work" by the lawyers who drafted it for Sanchez's approval, because U.S. military forces "did not have very many enemy prisoners of war at that point."
Within one month, Sanchez's cable was rescinded on instructions from senior officials at U.S. Central Command and replaced with a more cautious memo that allowed the use of muzzled dogs during interrogations only when Sanchez gave his direct approval -- something he told investigators he was never asked to do.
His new memo was based in part on an outdated 1987 version of the Army Field Manual for interrogations, which was more permissive than the 1992 version then in effect because it allowed complete control of light, heat, food, clothing and shelter as interrogation techniques, the Army report concluded. Investigators attributed this error by Sanchez's office to the Army's failure to update a key Web site with the 1992 report.
But whatever Sanchez's intent or policy, the practice of "abusing detainees with dogs started almost immediately" after the Army, acting at Miller's urging, brought several dog teams to Abu Ghraib in November 2003.
The fact that at least three "confusing and inconsistent" interrogation directives were approved within a month-long period "contributed to the belief" that illegal interrogation techniques were condoned, the Army report stated. An absence of leadership and oversight also left room for what the Army report described as "word of mouth" techniques to be passed around and followed by interrogators deployed to Iraq.
The Army report quoted Sanchez as saying he "never approved use of dogs." Fay also said in the report that "no documentation was found" showing approval by the Combined Joint Task Force 7, headed by Sanchez, "to use dogs in interrogations."
Asked to explain the apparent conflict between language in the report and the text of Sanchez's cable, Kern said that what Sanchez meant is that he never specifically approved an interrogation plan submitted to him for review that involved the use of dogs, while Fay said that Sanchez believes he only endorsed the general presence of muzzled dogs at the time interrogations were being conducted, rather than inside prison interrogation booths -- a practice that was clearly misunderstood.
Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the senior intelligence official at Abu Ghraib, told Army investigators that Miller, in addition to Sanchez, had authorized the use of dogs to "set the stage" for productive interrogations. But the authors of the report accepted Miller's contrary contention that he only recommended using dogs for detainee custody and control at Abu Ghraib. Miller is the head of U.S. military detainee operations in Iraq.
-------- space
Fuel Leak Scrubs Lockheed Atlas Florida Launch
REUTERS USA:
August 30, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26817/story.htm
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - About 11,000 gallons of rocket fuel spilled during fueling of a Lockheed Martin Atlas 2 rocket on Saturday, forcing a one-day delay in the launch of the rocket carrying a classified U.S. spy satellite, company officials said.
The Lockheed officials had no immediate explanation for why the super cold liquid oxygen spilled during fueling for the scheduled 7:02 p.m. EDT launch.
The liquid oxygen, which evaporates on contact with the atmosphere, posed no lasting hazard and the countdown continued until it was clear there was not enough fuel on hand to top off the tank.
"Looks like we're going to be a couple of thousand gallons short," Lockheed launch director Adrian Laffitte reported.
Launch was rescheduled for Sunday at 6:57 p.m. EDT.
The two-stage rocket carries a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.
This was to be the 63rd and final flight of the Atlas 2 series of rockets. The model is being superseded by the Atlas 5, a more versatile rocket that can be launched in light, medium or heavy payload configurations and was designed to be cheaper and easier to launch.
-------- spies
Nest of Spies
August 30, 2004
TomPaine.com (Project of The Institute for America's Future )
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/nest_of_spies.php
When Iranian "students" took over the U.S. embassy in 1979, they called it the "nest of spies." Now it seems, the FBI has discovered a real nest of spies, Israeli ones. Inside the Pentagon. Some of the people allegedly involved are the very same people who were first mentioned in an article ("The Lie Factory") by Jason Vest and myself in Mother Jones last year. (You can read it here .) That article cited Harold Rhode, a neocon operative in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessments, under the wizard-like Andy Marshall, and his sidekick, the laughably incompetent Larry Franklin.
Now Franklin, we all know, and perhaps Rhode, are under investigation by the FBI. Franklin is a minor cog in the Israeli nest of spies, who allegedly passed U.S. secrets on Iran to AIPAC, the Zionist lobby, who then passed it to the Israeli embassy. There are lots of details-but, so far, no one that I've seen has attempted to really analyze this. The basic paradox is: Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of Franklin's neocon pals, is under investigation in Iraq and in Washington for spying for Iran. Franklin is under the FBI gun for spying for Israel, against Iran. Does this make any sense? Of course not.
Let's assume that Chalabi and Franklin, two lower-level operatives for the same machine, are still working together. And that the machine, the great Neoconservative Empire Machine and its Israeli right-wing allies, is what needs to be investigated.
Franklin, for the past couple of years, has toiled away in the bowels of Paul Wolfowitz's Iraq war team. A former U.S. intelligence official has this to say about him:
Anyone who knew Franklin from DIA and from the past few years in OSD knows that the "incompetent fool way out of his depth" description fits. The Newsweek story of his walking, "out of the blue," into a private FBI-surveilled lunch meeting is pure Franklin: clueless. His DIA colleagues and supervisors knew he could not be depended upon for important tasks; some suspected he was mentally unbalanced. Taking him on missions abroad was asking for trouble: unaccounted absences, flaky "special case" demands, embarrassments with US embassy staffs and foreign personnel. He should have been fired long ago. Franklin was notoriously sloppy with security, never could be relied upon by his colleagues or supervisors to pull his weight on assigned projects or even to be found, repeatedly left messes behind for others to clean up, almost never met a suspense, and shamelessly bowed and scraped to the powerful and influential of the day. Days after a buddy from Net Assessments brought him into the former [Near East and South Asia office] with a promotion, it was "Paul" this and "Paul" that, referring to the [Deputy Secretary of Defense]. He ingratiated himself to OSD seniors by trafficking poison on intelligence seniors they already believed to be ideologically unreliable. Add to that deep draughts of the Kool-Aid and you have a prescription for disaster. Mostly, though, this one looks like his own personal one, and not entirely undeserved.
Of course anyone as "clueless" as Franklin would be sloppy with classified material. The pro-Ariel Sharon clique in the Pentagon (and elsewhere in the U.S. government) is so tightly bound and incestuously linked to Israel that having to draw boundaries between what's American and what's Israeli must boggle their small minds. So this time Franklin got caught. (P.S. Don't expect any big indictments, or any sweeping probe of Israel's spy apparatus in the United States. Reports the New York Times : "American counterintelligence officials say that Israeli espionage cases are difficult to investigate, because they involve an important ally that enjoys broad political influence in Washington. Several officials said that a number of espionage investigations involving Israel had been dropped or suppressed in the past in the face of political pressure." ) For the last two years I've watched Franklin, Rhode, Michael Rubin and others in the clique at meetings at the American Enterprise Institute, and what stands out above all is the fraternity-like bond that links them to one another, almost like a street gang.
For 25 years, this little clique has maintained sub rosa ties to Iran. They, and Israel, had multiple lines into Iran's mullahs long before the Shah fell. Israel armed Iran throughout the 1980s, including during the 444 days when thugs held U.S. diplomats hostage. They were behind Iran-contra, trying to push the United States into a closer relationship with Iran when we were, sensibly enough, backing Iraq. And they've never let up. Since 2001, when they took power with the Bush administration, they've plotted war against Iraq and plotted how to establish ties with Iran's national security apparatus and its military again, even if it meant undermining U.S. policy. A key figure in all this is Michael Ledeen, an AEI stalwart who's long had intimate ties to Israeli intelligence. And then there is Ahmad Chalabi, another Mossad-linked creature.
We can discount, or throw out, Israel's silly statement that it stopped spying against the United States after the Pollard affair. Israel has penetrated the United States so completely that it probably doesn't even call it spying anymore. It's business as usual.
So the question is: What connects Ledeen, Richard Perle, Chalabi and Franklin? We know that the United States doesn't really have an "Iran policy," unless hoping that nothing happens qualifies as a "policy." But what is the policy of Ledeen and Co.? They believe that Israel, Turkey, Iran, the Kurds, the Lebanese Christians and Pakistan can all be tied together in an alliance against the Arabs. That's been true since the 1950s. What's new is that Iraq presented them an opportunity: The Israel-Turkey-Iran et al. axis could take over and occupy part of the Arab bloc, thanks to the United States. Like the python who ate the deer, they are still struggling to digest it-though some, including myself but also including the CIA, believe they will choke on it. In any case, the gobbling up of Iraq hasn't gone too well, but at least they've accomplished their secondary objective: the destruction and dismantling of Iraq as a nation and as a military force that could threaten Israel. And Ledeen, who organized Franklin's secret missions to Iran since 2001, and Chalabi, who has secret missions of his own to Iran (both long exposed now), still believe that Iran is a useful partner in the anti-Arab axis.
More to come on Franklin, Rhode, Ledeen et al. this week.
----
And Now a Mole?
In the Pentagon, a suspected spy allegedly passes secrets about Iran to Israel
By Michael Isikoff And Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Sept. 6 issue - posted online August 30, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5853706/site/newsweek/
It was just a Washington lunch-one that the FBI happened to be monitoring. Nearly a year and a half ago, agents were monitoring a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and a lobbyist for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as part of a probe into possible Israeli spying. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, in the description of one intelligence official, another American "walked in" to the lunch out of the blue. Agents at first didn't know who the man was. They were stunned to discover he was Larry Franklin, a desk officer with the Near East and South Asia office at the Pentagon.
Franklin soon became a subject of the FBI investigation as well. Now he may face charges, accused of divulging to Israel classified information on U.S. government plans regarding Iran, officials say. While some U.S. officials warned against exaggerated accusations of spying, one administration source described the case as the most significant Israeli espionage investigation in Washington since Jonathan Pollard, an American who was imprisoned for life in 1987 for passing U.S. Navy secrets to the Israelis. The FBI and Justice Department are still reviewing the evidence, but one intelligence source believes Franklin may be arrested shortly.
The probe itself amounts to another embarrassing problem for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered Defense secretary. It comes during a week in which violence flared up again in Iraq and a Pentagon investigation indirectly blamed Rumsfeld for poor oversight in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal. In a statement, the Defense Department said it "has been cooperating with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time."
At first blush, officials close to the investigation say, Franklin seemed an unlikely suspect: he was described as a midlevel policy "wonk" with a doctorate who had toiled for some time on Mideast affairs. Yet he had previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and there was at least one other aspect to his background that caught the FBI's attention: although Franklin was not Jewish, he was an Army reservist who did his reserve duty at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
FBI counterintelligence agents began tracking him, and at one point watched him allegedly attempt to pass a classified U.S. policy document on Iran to one of the surveillance targets, according to a U.S. intelligence official. But his alleged confederate was "too smart," the official said, and refused to take it. Instead, he asked Franklin to brief him on its contents-and Franklin allegedly obliged. Franklin also passed information gleaned from more highly classified documents, the official said. If the government is correct, Franklin's motive appears to have been ideological rather than financial. There is no evidence that money changed hands. "For whatever reason, the guy hates Iran passionately," the official said, referring to the Iranian government.
NEWSWEEK's efforts to reach Franklin or a lawyer representing him were unsuccessful. But a close friend, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, said he believes the charges against Franklin are "nonsensical." Officials say that Franklin began cooperating about a month ago, after he was confronted by the FBI. At the time, these officials say, Franklin acknowledged meetings with the Israeli contact. Law-enforcement officials say they have no evidence that anyone above Franklin at the Pentagon had any knowledge of his activities.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, bristled at the suggestion of espionage. Ephraim Sneh, a member of Parliament and a retired general who has been monitoring the development of nukes in Iran for years, said that Israel would be crazy to spy on its best friend. "Since Pollard, we avoid any intelligence activity on U.S. soil," Sneh said in an interview. "I know the policy; I've been in this business for years. We avoid anything that even smells like intelligence-gathering in the U.S." Another Israeli official contended that the Israelis had no cause to steal secrets because anything important on Iran is already exchanged between the CIA and the Mossad, Israel's spy agency. In a statement, AIPAC denied that any of its employees received information "they believed was secret or classified," and said it was cooperating.
U.S. investigators would not reveal what kind of information Franklin was allegedly trying to divulge to Israel. But for months the administration has been debating what to do about Iran's clerical regime as well as its alleged program to build nuclear weapons-a subject of keen interest to the Israelis, who have quietly warned Washington that they will not permit Tehran to gain nuclear capability.
Franklin was known to be one of a tightly knit group of pro-Israel hawks in the Pentagon associated with his immediate superior, William Luti, the hard-charging and impassioned protegé of former House speaker Newt Gingrich. As deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Near East affairs, Luti was a key player in planning the Iraq war. He, in turn, works in the office of Under Secretary Douglas Feith, a career lawyer who, before he became the Pentagon's No. 3, was a sometime consultant for Likud, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's political party. Officials say they have no evidence that either Feith or Luti had any knowledge of Franklin's discussions with the Israelis.
Franklin has also been among the subjects of a separate probe being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee. Part of that investigation concerns alleged "rogue" intelligence activities by Feith's staff. Among these activities was a series of meetings that Franklin and one of his colleagues, Harold Rhode, had in Paris in late 2001 with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the shadowy Iranian arms dealer made infamous during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. One purpose of those meetings was to explore a scheme for overthrowing the mullahs in Iran, though Rumsfeld later said the plan was never seriously considered. But so far, there is no evidence that the Ghorbanifar contacts are related to the espionage probe. And officials familiar with the case suggest that the political damage to Bush and the Pentagon may prove to be more serious than the damage to national security.
With Michael Hirsh and Daniel Klaidman in Washington and Dan Ephron in Jerusalem
----
Analyst at center of spy flap called naive, ardently pro-Israel
By Nathan Guttman,
Mon., August 30, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/470856.html
WASHINGTON - Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst suspected of passing classified material about Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has never hidden his unequivocal support of Israel. Colleagues from the Near East and South Asia desk at the Defense Department said yesterday that his sympathy for Israel was overt and public - he didn't refrain from praising Israel and he held aggressive views about several Arab governments, primarily the ayatollahs' regime in Iran and Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq. "Everyone knew he was a friend of Israel, but he didn't go about it in any unusual way," a Pentagon coworker said. "He was always accessible to everyone."
Franklin's resume describes his current position, which he has held since 2001, as: "Office of the Secretary of Defense, Policy, Near East/South Asia, Iran desk analyst, Office of Special Plans Iraq. Focus Projects: Hizbollah, Islam, Saudi Arabia." But the official resume reveals only a few details about the man at the center of the affair.
Franklin, a religious Catholic in his late 50s, lives in Kearneysville, West Virginia, a 90-minute drive from the Pentagon. But living in the distant suburb assured a high quality of life for Franklin, his wife Patricia and their five children, some of whom are college-age. Franklin has a doctorate in East Asian studies from St. John's University, a Catholic university in New York City, and speaks Farsi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese (in addition to English). On top of his work at the Pentagon, Franklin teaches history at Shepherd University in West Virginia.
In conversations about Franklin with his colleagues, one of the words that comes up again and again is "naive." He is described as an ideologue who believes wholeheartedly in the neo-conservative approach. "Everything by him is black and white," said someone who has worked with Franklin in the Pentagon. "He is a very nice person, very conservative, not at all arrogant," said the colleague, adding that one of the reasons he was brought into the Near East and South Asia desk was his political beliefs.
Franklin's political opinions are similar to those of his bosses - Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense, and William Luti, the deputy undersecretary of defense responsible for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. Like them, Franklin supports the policy of acting to bring democracy to Arab regimes and build up pro-American allies in the Middle East.
But those who have worked with Franklin also say he was a bit extreme in his work patterns, attitude and behavior. They occasionally referred to him as "Planet Larry" as a way of expressing the extent to which he "lives in a world of his own," colleagues said.
People who have worked with Franklin believe that it was his trademark naivete that got him in trouble, saying Franklin was not aware of the severity of his activities, and so did not try to hide or mask them. Franklin visited Israel eight times while he served in the U.S. Air Force and worked at the Pentagon. Most of his visits appear to have been related to his reserve duty service as an officer dealing with international contacts. According to his resume, Franklin served as a reserve air force colonel between 1997 and 2004, working with the U.S. military attache in Tel Aviv. Beforehand he was involved in analyzing counter-intelligence in the air force.
Had the current accusations not come to light, Franklin's job at the Pentagon would have depended on the presidential elections, his coworkers said. If Democratic candidate John Kerry wins the next election, colleagues said, it's doubtful that Franklin will move up, due to his well-known political views.
"He was considered a little strange even for the neo-cons," a coworker said. "They're probably saying to themselves - oh, Larry again."
--------
Officials Say Publicity Derailed Secrets Inquiry
August 30, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/30spy.html?ei=1&en=43cce4a544f1e489&ex=1094841390&pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 - The Pentagon official under suspicion of turning over classified information to Israel began cooperating with federal agents several weeks ago and was preparing to lead the authorities to contacts inside the Israeli government when the case became publicly known last week, government officials said Sunday.
The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis.
As a result, several areas of the case remain murky, the officials said. One main uncertainty is the legal status of Lawrence A. Franklin, the lower-level Pentagon policy analyst who the authorities believe passed the Israelis a draft presidential policy directive related to Iran.
No arrest in the case is believed to be imminent, in part because prosecutors have not yet clearly established whether Mr. Franklin broke the law. But the officials said there was evidence that he turned the classified material over to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Officials of the group are thought to have then passed the information to Israeli intelligence.
The lobbying group and Israel have denied that they engaged in any wrongdoing. Efforts to reach Mr. Franklin or his lawyer have not been successful. Reporters who went to Mr. Franklin's residence in West Virginia on Sunday were asked by a local sheriff not to approach the house. Friends of Mr. Franklin's, like Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, said the accusations against him were baseless.
As the overall outline of the case emerged more clearly, doubts about some aspects of it seemed to stand out in sharper relief. Investigators, the officials said, may never fully understand the role of two officials for the lobbying group who they believe were in contact with Mr. Franklin. Nor are they likely to be able to completely determine whether Israel regarded the entire matter as a formal intelligence operation or as a casual relationship that Mr. Franklin himself may not have fully understood.
Investigators do not know, for example, whether Israeli intelligence officers "tasked" intermediaries at the group to seek specific information for Mr. Franklin to obtain, which would make the case more serious. Officials said some investigators speculated that Israeli officials might have passively accepted whatever classified material that officials for the lobbying group happened to get from Mr. Franklin.
Moreover, Mr. Franklin appears to be an unlikely candidate for intelligence work. Although he was involved with Middle East policy, a defense official said Sunday that he had no impact on United States policy and few dealings with senior Pentagon officials, including the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz.
At one point in the run-up to the Iraq war in early 2003, Mr. Franklin was brought in to help arrange meetings between Mr. Wolfowitz and Shiite and Sunni clerics across the United States, a defense official said. But he was never regarded as an influential figure.
"He was at the bottom of the food chain, at the grunt level," a senior defense official said. Another defense official said Mr. Franklin "had a certain expertise and had access to things, but he wasn't a policy maker."
Still, as a desk officer, especially one with a background at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mr. Franklin would have had top-secret security clearance. That would have given him access to most of the nation's most-sensitive intelligence about Iran, including that relating to its nuclear program, Pentagon officials said. He would also have had access to diplomatic cables and drafts of confidential documents about the administration's policies toward Iran.
While the facts of the case remained unclear and contradictory, the inquiry has stirred deeply emotional responses. On Sunday, in an event held on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Bernice Manocherian, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, described the allegations against her group as "outrageous, as well as baseless."
In a speech in New York to Jewish Republicans, Ms. Manocherian said, "We will not allow innuendo or false allegations against Aipac to distract us from our central mission." The event was sponsored by the group, along with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the United Jewish Communities.
Even so, officials who discussed the case on Sunday, including three who have been briefed on it recently, said it began as a highly confidential inquiry into what counterintelligence agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarded as a serious allegation of possible spying that appeared to go well beyond the extensive information-sharing relationship that exists between the United States and Israel.
The F.B.I. obtained warrants from a special federal court for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and for months kept tabs on Mr. Franklin.
In an article on its Web site on Sunday, Newsweek magazine reported that the bureau first learned of Mr. Franklin when agents observed him walking into a lunch in Washington between a lobbyist for the American Israeli group and an Israeli embassy official.
American officials would not comment on the report. Israeli officials said Sunday that the lobbying group's main point of contact in Washington was Naor Gilon, who is described in a biography on the Israeli Embassy's Web site as the minister of political affairs. Israeli officials said Mr. Gilon had no involvement in intelligence matters. Efforts to reach him on Sunday were not successful.
Mr. Franklin began cooperating with agents this month in an arrangement that is still not completely understood. He agreed to help the authorities monitor his meetings with his contacts at the lobbying group. It is not clear whether the authorities in exchange agreed to grant him any form of leniency.
Current and former defense officials said this weekend that Mr. Franklin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency for most of his career in the government until 2001, when he was detailed to the Pentagon's policy office, headed by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. Mr. Franklin is one of about 1,500 people who work for Mr. Feith.
When he transferred to the Pentagon policy office, Mr. Franklin was assigned to the Northern Gulf directorate to work on issues related to Iran. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that office was expanded and renamed the Office of Special Plans, and did most of the policy work on Iraq in the run-up to the war. Mr. Franklin was a part of that office but continued to work on Iran.
In his job, Mr. Franklin is one of two Iran desk officers in the Pentagon's Near Eastern and South Asian Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. The Near Eastern office is supervised by William J. Luti, a deputy under secretary of defense, who also oversaw the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which conducted some early policy work for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
According to former colleagues, Mr. Franklin was originally a Soviet specialist at the D.I.A. who transferred to the agency's Middle East division in the early 1990's. He learned Farsi and became an Iran analyst, developing extensive contacts within the community of Iranians who opposed the Tehran government.
"He was very close to the anti-Iranian dissidents," one former colleague said. "He was a good analyst of the Iranian political scene, but he was also someone who would go off on his own."
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from West Virginia for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.
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Israel Says It Has No Need to Spy on U.S.
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast-israel-spy.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel, seeking to contain damage from a brewing spy scandal in the United States, said on Monday it already receives all the classified information it needs from the U.S. government through shared intelligence.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom reiterated Israel's strenuous denial of espionage after news the FBI was investigating whether a Pentagon analyst fed classified documents dealing with Iran via a powerful pro-Israel lobby group.
``There is no truth whatsoever in the claims that Israel spied or in any way acted against our great friend and ally, the United States,'' Shalom told reporters in Jerusalem.
``I think the ties between Israel and the United States are intimate. The cooperation and levels of information are so close, so intimate, that the information that is exchanged is much more classified that any conversation or another,'' he said.
Israeli officials insist that Israel has not spied on the United States since being caught red-handed two decades ago in a scandal involving U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard -- jailed for life in a case that is still an irritant in relations.
The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee also denied serving as a conduit for documents from the analyst connected to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office.
But both countries share fears of Islamic militancy and whether bitter foe Iran will develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies trying to build bombs to rival Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal.
The Washington Post has said the investigation focused on an Iran specialist at the Defense Intelligence Agency who had once served in Israel. It was unclear whether the case would result in espionage charges or lesser charges, the report said.
Some Israelis have voiced fears that just a hint of scandal could hurt links with the United States no matter whether any allegations are ever prosecuted in court.
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Top Officials Briefed on Pentagon Probe
By CURT ANDERSON
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 5:40 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47077-2004Aug30.html
WASHINGTON - Two high-ranking Defense Department officials have been briefed by FBI agents investigating a Pentagon analyst suspected of passing U.S. secrets about Iran to the Israeli government, officials said Monday.
The recent briefings of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy, could indicate that the yearlong FBI probe is nearing a conclusion. No arrests have been made or charges announced.
Investigators were forced to accelerate activity in the case when news stories about it began appearing on Friday, according to two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing. The publicity also may have hampered the ability of investigators to follow key leads and provided warning to potential targets, they said.
The central figure in the investigation is Larry Franklin, a Middle East analyst who works in Feith's office. Franklin was described by law enforcement officials as cooperating with the FBI. He has not responded to telephone messages seeking comment.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Franklin passed highly classified material about Bush administration policy on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the major Israeli lobbying group in Washington, and whether AIPAC in turn passed it to Israel.
AIPAC has acknowledged that the FBI has interviewed some of its employees but strongly denies any wrongdoing.
"We've cooperated in this investigation. We think there is nothing to it," said AIPAC attorney Nathan Lewin.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Monday that meetings between Israeli embassy employees in Washington and U.S. government officials are commonplace, and that the two governments routinely share secrets.
"Israel and the United States have intimate ties ... and the information being exchanged is much more classified than any conversation that may have taken place," Shalom told reporters in Israel.
The U.S. officials familiar with Feith's briefing, which occurred Sunday at his office in the Pentagon, said he was told the investigation's focus inside the Defense Department was limited to Franklin. Other senior Defense Department and State Department officials have also been interviewed or briefed by the FBI, but the officials would provide no other names.
So far, little light has been shed on what might have motivated Franklin to allegedly pass on the secret Iran material.
Israel has said Iran's ambitions to become a nuclear power pose the single greatest threat to the Jewish state. The United States has strongly backed an Israeli effort to block nuclear development in Iran, with President Bush including Iran in his "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea.
AIPAC, which is instrumental in procuring some $3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel, lists stopping the Iranian threat as one of its top priorities. AIPAC boasts more than 65,000 members in all 50 states.
Also Monday, Israeli officials confirmed that a senior Israeli diplomat in Washington has met with Franklin. Those officials, also speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the diplomat as Naor Gilon, head of the Israeli Embassy's political department.
Gilon told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that he did nothing wrong but was concerned that he may no longer be able to work in Washington because of the investigation.
"Now, people will be scared to talk with me," Gilon said in a story published Monday.
Associated Press writers Barry Schweid in Washington and Karin Laub in Jerusalem contributed to this story.
-------- un
War Making Headlines, but Peace Breaks Out
August 30, 2004
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_AND_PEACE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
The chilling sights and sounds of war fill newspapers and television screens worldwide, but war itself is in decline, peace researchers report.
In fact, the number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meantime, are growing in number.
"International engagement is blossoming," said American scholar Monty G. Marshall. "There's been an enormous amount of activity to try to end these conflicts."
For months the battle reports and casualty tolls from Iraq and Afghanistan have put war in the headlines, but Swedish and Canadian non-governmental groups tracking armed conflict globally find a general decline in numbers from peaks in the 1990s.
The authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in a 2004 Yearbook report obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication, says 19 major armed conflicts were under way worldwide in 2003, a sharp drop from 33 wars counted in 1991.
The Canadian organization Project Ploughshares, using broader criteria to define armed conflict, says in its new annual report that the number of conflicts declined to 36 in 2003, from a peak of 44 in 1995.
The Stockholm institute counts continuing wars that have produced 1,000 or more battle-related deaths in any single year. Project Ploughshares counts any armed conflict that produces 1,000 such deaths cumulatively.
The Stockholm report, to be released in September, notes three wars ended as of 2003 - in Angola, Rwanda and Somalia - and a fourth, the separatist war in India's Assam state, was dropped from the "major" category after casualties were recalculated.
It lists three new wars in 2003 - in Liberia and in Sudan's western region of Darfur, along with the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq. These joined such long-running conflicts as the Kashmiri insurgency in India, the leftist guerrilla war in Colombia, and the separatist war in Russia's Chechnya region.
Other major armed conflicts listed by the Stockholm researchers were in Algeria, Burundi, Peru, Indonesia's Aceh province, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Israel, and Turkey. Their list also includes the U.S.-al-Qaida war, mainly in Afghanistan, the unresolved India-Pakistan conflict, and two insurgencies in the Philippines.
"Not only are the numbers declining, but the intensity" - the bloodshed in each conflict - "is declining," said Marshall, founder of a University of Maryland program studying political violence.
The continuing wars in Algeria, Chechnya and Turkey are among those that have subsided into low-intensity conflicts. At Canada's University of British Columbia, scholars at the Human Security Center are quantifying this by tackling the difficult task of calculating war casualties worldwide for their Human Security Report, to be released late in 2004.
A collaboration with Sweden's Uppsala University, that report will conservatively estimate battle-related deaths worldwide at 15,000 in 2002 and, because of the Iraq war, rising to 20,000 in 2003. Those estimates are sharply down from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, a time of major costly conflicts in such places as the former Zaire and southern Sudan, and from a post-World War II peak of 700,000 in 1951.
The Canadian center's director, Andrew Mack, said the figures don't include deaths from war-induced starvation and disease, deaths from ethnic conflicts not involving states, or unopposed massacres, such as in Rwanda in 1994.
Why the declines? Peace scholars point to crosscurrents of global events.
For one thing, the Cold War's end and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 ignited civil and separatist wars in the old East bloc and elsewhere, as the superpowers' hands were lifted in places where they'd long held allies in check. Those wars surged in the early 1990s.
"The decline over the past decade measures the move away from that unusual period," said Ernie Regehr, director of Project Ploughshares.
At the same time, however, the U.S.-Russian thaw worked against war as well, scholars said, by removing superpower support in "proxy wars," as in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Cambodia. With dwindling money and arms, warmakers had to seek peace.
The United Nations and regional bodies, meanwhile, were mobilizing for more effective peacemaking worldwide.
"The end of the Cold War liberated the U.N." - historically paralyzed by U.S.-Soviet antagonism - "to do what its founders had originally intended and more," Mack said.
In 2003 alone, from Ivory Coast to the Solomon Islands, 14 multilateral missions were launched to protect or reinforce peace settlements, the highest number of new peace missions begun in a single year since the Cold War, the Stockholm institute will report.
The recent record shows "conflicts don't end without some form of intervention from outside," said Renata Dwan, who heads the institute's program on armed conflict and conflict management.
Most new missions, half of which were in Africa, were undertaken by regional organizations or coalitions of states, often with U.N. sanction.
The idea of U.N. primacy in world peace and security took a "bruising" at U.S. hands in 2003, when Washington circumvented the U.N. Security Council to invade Iraq, Dwan noted. But meanwhile, elsewhere, the world body was deploying a monthly average of 38,500 military peacekeepers in 2003 - triple the level of 1999.
By year's end, the institute yearbook will conclude, "the U.N. was arguably in a stronger position than at any time in recent years."
-------- us
Hour of the Generals
The "good soldiers" who lost Vietnam must tell the truth about Iraq.
August 30, 2004
By Andrew J. Bacevich
The American Conservative
http://amconmag.com/2004_08_30/article1.html
The big news, all but lost in the welter of attention given to revelations of past intelligence failures and the continuing saga of Martha Stewart, is that the strength of the anti-American resistance in Iraq is growing by leaps and bounds. Over the past year, the insurgent order-of-battle has enjoyed as much as a fourfold increase. If we needed further proof that the war is not going well, evidence is now at hand.
A year ago, when he assumed charge of United States Central Command and acknowledged that Operation Iraqi Freedom had given way to what he candidly called a "classical guerrilla war," Gen. John Abizaid assessed the total number of insurgents to be 5,000. But according to a recent Associated Press dispatch all but ignored by major media outlets, official estimates of the enemy's strength have risen to 20,000-this despite the fact that over the past year American forces have killed or imprisoned several thousand Iraqis and so-called "foreign fighters." In short, enemy recruitment is easily outpacing our efforts to reduce his numbers.
There is a sense in which this hardly comes as a surprise. Despite periodic ebbs and flows, the fighting in Iraq over the past year has progressively intensified. Overall security has deteriorated. Bush administration efforts to portray the resistance as a last-ditch effort by a handful of Saddam loyalists have long since lost all credibility. The truth is that our adversary is shrewd, resourceful, and highly motivated. By and large, we find ourselves dancing to his tune: he blows up an oil pipeline, detonates a bomb in downtown Baghdad, or assassinates an Iraqi official-and we react after the fact.
But the new figure of 20,000 insurgents-if sympathizers and fellow travelers are included the actual number could well be even higher-does qualify as important in one sense. It affirms long-standing suspicions, vociferously denied by the Bush administration, that we have too few troops on the ground to win.
History suggests that one precondition for defeating guerrillas is overwhelming numerical superiority, with a ratio of 10:1 traditionally cited as the minimum requirement. Even counting the fledgling Iraqi army, allied contingents (some of dubious quality), and the modern-day mercenaries known as private contractors, counterinsurgent forces available in Iraq today fall well short of that 10:1 standard.
Numbers alone cannot guarantee victory. But without enough boots on the ground, it becomes impossible to provide security. Absent security, it becomes impossible to gain the trust and confidence of the people, as the newly installed Iraqi government desperately needs to do.
How many U.S. troops do we actually need to pacify Iraq, a landmass the size of California, with long, open borders and an increasingly alienated population of 25 million? A quarter of a million soldiers-almost twice the number currently deployed-would not be too many.
Bush and Rumsfeld have repeatedly vowed to provide their commanders with whatever they need to accomplish their mission. For public consumption at least, U.S. generals have said that troop strength in Iraq is adequate. But the new, higher estimate of the enemy's forces has made that position untenable.
Either the Bush administration needs to get serious about winning the war that it so recklessly sought in Iraq, or it needs to cut its losses. To persist in the present course is merely to perpetuate the existing stalemate-with good men and women getting killed and maimed, tens of billions of dollars being expended, and the United States exhausting its stores of goodwill-all to no purpose.
Getting serious means mobilizing the country for an expanded military commitment. Mobilization necessarily entails changes in domestic priorities. It also implies an urgent, costly, and politically sensitive expansion of the U.S. Army, the service bearing the greatest burden for the war's conduct.
Cutting our losses means promptly beginning the process of disengagement. That implies bringing the troops home, leaving it to the now-liberated Iraqis to sort out their future, and mending the diplomatic fences so recklessly torn down in the administration's rush to war.
The issue is a political one. But military realities rather than ideological fantasies or electoral calculations deserve pride of place in considering the alternatives.
For the present generation of American military leaders, testing time is at hand. Duty demands that they speak unpalatable realities to civilian officials who on the eve of an election campaign desire nothing more than to dodge the truth. Unless they receive immediate, decisive attention, the military contradictions besetting U.S. policy in Iraq may soon supersede in importance the political miscalculations that landed us in this mess in the first place.
We have been here before. In an earlier insurgent war that had self-evidently gone awry, a prior generation of American generals faced a similar challenge. They flunked their test. Rather than confront President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara with the fundamental defects of their policy in Vietnam, they kept quiet and went along. They chose to be "good soldiers." As such, they made themselves complicit in a vast and unnecessary tragedy. History excoriates their memory.
Every day in Iraq young American soldiers demonstrate great physical courage in supporting a misguided policy. Whether the current crop of U.S. military leaders can muster comparable moral courage remains to be seen. But their moment approaches.
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University. He is the author of The New American Militarism, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
----
Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds
Top Officials Did Not Make Interrogation Policies Clear
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45319-2004Aug29.html
Early last September, attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq were spiking and an Army general dispatched from a military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded in a classified study that the detention of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad "does not yet set conditions for successful interrogations."
Under pressure to extract more information from the prisoners -- to "go beyond" what Army interrogation rules allowed, as an Army general later put it -- the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq sent a secret cable to his boss at U.S. Central Command on Sept. 14, outlining more aggressive interrogation methods he planned to authorize immediately.
The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."
Sanchez's order calling on police dog handlers to help intimidate detainees into talking -- a practice later seen in searing photographs -- was one of a handful of documents written by senior officials that Army officials now say helped sow the seeds of prison abuse in Iraq. They did so, according to an Army report released Wednesday, by lending credence to the idea that aggressive interrogation methods were sanctioned by officers going up the chain of command.
But the issue of using dogs is also an example of how the U.S. military's ad hoc and informal decision-making in Iraq created confusion and allowed these harsh methods to infiltrate from Afghanistan to Guantanamo and finally to Iraq, despite Bush administration contentions that detainees in each theater of conflict were subject to different rules and that Iraqis would receive the most protections.
The text of the Sanchez cable was not included in public copies of the Army's report, but was obtained by The Washington Post from a government official upset by what Sanchez approved.
The authors of the Army report did not accuse Sanchez of directly instigating abuse, and they did not cite the contents of his memo in the unclassified version. But Army Gen. Paul J. Kern -- who oversaw the drafting of the report -- said in an interview last week that Sanchez "wrote a policy which was not clear," and that by doing so, he allowed junior officers to conclude mistakenly that they were following an official policy as they stepped over a legal line.
This interpretation of the role senior officials played -- that they committed sins of omission, rather than commission, by writing ambiguous instructions and then failing to police the errant ways of subordinates -- is likely to be challenged in court, according to lawyers for some of the soldiers on trial in connection with the prison abuse.
No one above the military grade of the top intelligence commander at Abu Ghraib was legally "culpable" for the abuse, the Army report concluded. But a separate report on the abuse released Wednesday by a panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld referred to Sanchez's memo on Sept. 14 as one of several documents that led "some soldiers or contractors who committed abuse" to believe "the techniques were condoned."
Other such documents cited by officials who participated in the two probes include a December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld that authorized harsh interrogation methods for prisoners at Guantanamo, and a controversial Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President Bush that declared that fighters detained in Afghanistan were not entitled as a matter of law to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.
The Rumsfeld memo included authorization for the use of dogs; the Bush memo was cited by legal advisers to Sanchez as the basis for their determination that some Iraqi detainees were not entitled to the full legal protections provided by the Geneva Conventions, according to the independent panel. This "confusion" between interrogation rules devised for use at Guantanamo and Afghanistan and the protections mandated by international law in Iraq contributed to some of the abuse, according to the Army report's executive summary.
Kern said: "We found not culpability" among senior officers such as Sanchez, but "clear responsibility" for not deterring junior officers and enlisted men from inappropriate behavior. "They didn't clarify for those young interrogators what their responsibilities were."
Several abuses in particular are highlighted by the two reports released last week: the use of dogs to frighten detainees, the repeated stripping of detainees, and the use of extended isolation and sensory deprivation. Each clearly violated Army rules and violated Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under military occupation from threats of violence, isolation from visits by the Red Cross, and humiliating and degrading treatment, the Army report said.
The issue of using military dogs illustrates how a blizzard of memos from senior officials sowed an impression of tolerance, if not approval, for aggressive interrogations. It has been a particular embarrassment to the Pentagon since photos of dogs snarling and barking in front of cowering Iraqis -- and in one case preparing to bite a detainee -- were made public in June, about six months after soldiers there recorded the images.
It also illustrates how, as the independent panel's report concluded, the migration of lists and interrogators from one theater to another resulted in "policies approved for use on al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions, [being] applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions."
Army investigators probing the abuse in Iraq traced the initial idea of using dogs -- a technique that does not appear in the service's standard field guide -- to interrogation practices followed by U.S. intelligence officials and Special Forces teams deployed in Afghanistan. Kern said the officials there concluded that Afghans feared dogs because of religious beliefs that those bitten are unhealthy or condemned, and became convinced that this fear could be exploited to compel intelligence disclosures.
The technique migrated first from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, via Washington. In late 2002, aides to Rumsfeld -- responding to a request by officials at Guantanamo for approval of more aggressive interrogation methods -- canvassed officers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved techniques for use only at that site, which included "the use of dogs to induce stress and the removal of clothing as Counter-Resistance techniques," according to the Army report.
Rumsfeld rescinded his memo the following month, after a private protest by Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora over its sanctioning of practices in violation of international law and military regulations. The independent panel's report faulted Rumsfeld for not obtaining "a wider range of legal opinions and a more robust debate" before he approved the rules. It also said his promulgation of these guidelines -- even temporarily -- contributed "to a belief that stronger interrogation methods were needed and appropriate."
By April, after a Pentagon review, Rumsfeld approved a new list of interrogation techniques that omitted the use of dogs. But U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, meanwhile, continued to use many of the practices on Rumsfeld's Dec. 2 list, including "isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs, and implementing sleep and light deprivation," the Army report concluded.
U.S. military commanders there urged the removal of clothing on grounds that "no specific written legal prohibition existed." The Pentagon has not released details of abusive Special Forces activities in Afghanistan. But the independent panel said an unreleased Defense Department report has found "a range of abuses and causes similar in scope and magnitude" to those involving interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
In Afghanistan, these tactics were also employed by members of the Army's 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, a unit transferred to Iraq in the summer of 2003. After Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the top official at the Guantanamo prison, visited Abu Ghraib from Aug. 31 to Sept. 9 and called for more rigorous interrogations there, some of these tactics -- including the use of dogs -- were incorporated in a memo drafted by Sanchez's legal office on Sept. 10 and sent to prison interrogators.
Sanchez's legal advisers subsequently drew on both this guidance and the legal justifications in Bush's 2002 directive while drafting the Sept. 14 cable from Sanchez to Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, the independent panel's report said.
"Enclosed is the policy modeled on the one implemented for interrogation conducted at Gitmo," Sanchez said in his cable, referring to Guantanamo Bay. It authorized not only exploiting prisoners' "fear" of dogs but also the use of isolation; "sleep management"; "yelling, loud music, and light control . . . to create fear, disorient detainees and capture shock"; deception, including fake documents and reports; and "stress positions," such as forced kneeling for as many as four hours at a time.
The cable placed no restrictions on the use of dogs on "detainees" and "security internees," but said any use involving enemy prisoners of war would require Sanchez's direct approval. In fact, as Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, an intelligence official who co-wrote the Army report, said in an interview last week, the use of this narrow qualifying phrase in Sanchez's memo reflected bad "staff work" by the lawyers who drafted it for Sanchez's approval, because U.S. military forces "did not have very many enemy prisoners of war at that point."
Within one month, Sanchez's cable was rescinded on instructions from senior officials at U.S. Central Command and replaced with a more cautious memo that allowed the use of muzzled dogs during interrogations only when Sanchez gave his direct approval -- something he told investigators he was never asked to do.
His new memo was based in part on an outdated 1987 version of the Army Field Manual for interrogations, which was more permissive than the 1992 version then in effect because it allowed complete control of light, heat, food, clothing and shelter as interrogation techniques, the Army report concluded. Investigators attributed this error by Sanchez's office to the Army's failure to update a key Web site with the 1992 report.
But whatever Sanchez's intent or policy, the practice of "abusing detainees with dogs started almost immediately" after the Army, acting at Miller's urging, brought several dog teams to Abu Ghraib in November 2003.
The fact that at least three "confusing and inconsistent" interrogation directives were approved within a month-long period "contributed to the belief" that illegal interrogation techniques were condoned, the Army report stated. An absence of leadership and oversight also left room for what the Army report described as "word of mouth" techniques to be passed around and followed by interrogators deployed to Iraq.
The Army report quoted Sanchez as saying he "never approved use of dogs." Fay also said in the report that "no documentation was found" showing approval by the Combined Joint Task Force 7, headed by Sanchez, "to use dogs in interrogations."
Asked to explain the apparent conflict between language in the report and the text of Sanchez's cable, Kern said that what Sanchez meant is that he never specifically approved an interrogation plan submitted to him for review that involved the use of dogs, while Fay said that Sanchez believes he only endorsed the general presence of muzzled dogs at the time interrogations were being conducted, rather than inside prison interrogation booths -- a practice that was clearly misunderstood.
Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the senior intelligence official at Abu Ghraib, told Army investigators that Miller, in addition to Sanchez, had authorized the use of dogs to "set the stage" for productive interrogations. But the authors of the report accepted Miller's contrary contention that he only recommended using dogs for detainee custody and control at Abu Ghraib. Miller is the head of U.S. military detainee operations in Iraq.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Secret Court Poses Challenges
Non-Government Litigants Lack Access, Ways to Influence Cases
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45166-2004Aug29.html
The Justice Department has argued in a recent court case that librarians, booksellers and other businesses can easily challenge a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act by appealing to a super-secret court that approves surveillance of terrorists and foreign intelligence agents.
The only problem, according to a document released last week, is that the same court does not allow anyone but government attorneys and agents inside its doors.
The rules governing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also do not include procedures for outside litigants to file memorandums or otherwise influence a case, according to a copy of the rules obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU staff lawyer, said the court rules "do not seem to contemplate the possibility that anyone other than a government attorney may appear before the court," nor do they allow for outside attorneys to file motions to quash the subpoenas the court issues.
The surveillance court was established as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 and has operated in almost total secrecy since then. Justice Department statistics provided to Congress indicate the court approved more than 1,700 searches and seizures last year, eclipsing the number of traditional criminal wiretaps authorized by local and federal courts.
The five-page list of rules gives a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the FISA court, outlining the powers available to each judge and the procedures for applying for warrants and other operational details. The rules were provided to the ACLU by the FBI, which indicated they were the most recent FISA court rules in the agency's possession, Jaffer said.
A duty of the court is to oversee one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, Section 215, which allows the FBI to obtain "tangible things" from businesses during counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. The broadly worded section has raised the ire of librarians, in particular, because it would allow the FBI to seize library records while forbidding the library to publicly reveal the search.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said in September that the section had never been used, but recent court filings indicate the FBI may since have sought to use it.
In a Michigan lawsuit filed by the ACLU, Justice attorneys have argued that anyone targeted under the provision would have the ability to contest the issue. "If and when a Section 215 order is served on these plaintiffs, they will have ample opportunity to challenge it before the court that issues the order (i.e. the FISA Court)," the attorneys wrote in a July brief. But the court's rules say that only attorneys empowered by the attorney general or government agents may appear before it, and there is no mention of accepting outside motions or briefs.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment last week, citing ongoing litigation.
Patrice McDermott, deputy director of government relations for the American Library Association, said the government's arguments "appear to be a red herring."
"They keep saying you can challenge it, but they have never indicated how anyone could actually do so," she said.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Fuji Blimp Helps With Convention Security
August 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CVN-New-York-Cityscape.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- At the closely guarded Republican National Convention, even the Fujifilm Blimp has a role in security. Fuji Photo Film USA Inc., the Valhalla, N.Y.-based U.S. arm of the Japanese film maker, is allowing the New York Police Department use of the blimp to bolster aerial patrols above Madison Square Garden.
Police officials refused to say how the blimp was being used, but Fujifilm spokesman Tom Shay confirmed Monday that NYPD officers were on board, free of charge, at the department's request.
The company has worked previously with law enforcers since the 2001 terror attacks, allowing counterterror officers aboard the blimp during high-profile events like the U.S. Open tennis tournament and New York's annual Fleet Week military celebration.
``When it's been possible to provide the blimp for surveillance, we've done that,'' Shay said. ``We normally would be flying anyway at the convention to give our brand name exposure.''
Elephants milling around Monday outside Tiffany's declared that Republicans may no longer use the pachyderm's image as the party's symbol.
The elephants -- truthfully they were actors in gray suits, rubber elephant trunks and big paper ears -- said the GOP does not represent properly the ``elephant values'' of kindness, compassion and caring for their children.
``We can no longer in good conscience represent the GOP,'' said elephant Kayhan Irani. ``Elephants by nature are gentle creatures.''
She said the actors were motivated by Republican positions on education and the environment.
Another member, Jennifer Nordstrom, said that when elephants gave Republicans the right to use their image, ``It was a different party, the party of Lincoln. Elephants never forget.''
Political cartoonist Thomas Nast created the image for the party in an 1874 Harper's Weekly drawing.
Delegate Jim Neiman, one of 450 residents of Hulett, Wyo., was impressed with the free entertainment provided by New York's host committee.
The delegates were being treated to prime seats for ``Wicked'' and ``Phantom of the Opera,'' dinners at '21' and the Rainbow Room, tours of the United Nations and the New York Stock Exchange.
Such diversions, Nieman said Monday, are lacking in Hulett, where ``we stay on the phone and talk for 10 minutes even when it's the wrong number.''
``New York is extremely enjoyable,'' he said. ``Everyone's been extremely friendly, except maybe for some of the picketers, but I assume they're mostly from out of state, and I won't hold them against New York.''
Another Wyoming delegate, Gayle Wright of wealthy Teton County, told the Daily News that although she'd never seen ``The Sopranos,'' she'd heard that ``the main actor in it'' had bought a home near hers.
New Yorkers know him as James Gandolfini.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg went shopping at Macy's flagship store near Madison Square Garden on Monday and took several delegates with him. Gina Valdez, wife of an Arkansas delegate, said, ``I'm just in total awe. I don't even think our mall is this big in Little Rock.''
Macy's was offering a 15 percent discount to delegates and Cristyne Nicholas, head of the city's tourist agency, said the store's personal shoppers ``will show our friends from out of state how to shop and acquire that New York look, like our mayor.''
The mayor disputed the idea that New Yorkers had fled the city. ``I was just outside,'' he said. ``I took a walk all around Macy's, and I can tell you, the streets are mobbed.''
The city's police officers, battling Mayor Michael Bloomberg over a labor contract but preoccupied with convention duty, are getting some help on the picket lines from their brethren from around the country.
Cops from Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Marin County, Calif., and Nassau County, N.Y., have come to the Big Apple, grabbed picket signs and donned protest shirts to show their support at events this week.
``We are here to picket with our New York brothers-in-arms because of our belief that police officers should be properly compensated for the dangerous and demanding job that they do,'' said Thomas Nee, president of Boston's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
Patrick Lynch, president of the New York City PBA, thanked the officers for their support. NYPD officers have been working without a contract for more than two years. In recent weeks, the police and firemen's unions have staged demonstrations and shadowed Bloomberg, even staging a rally outside his home in the middle of the night.
Associated Press writers Donna de la Cruz, Tom Hays and Karen Matthews contributed to this report.
--------
Army of Police Keep Watch Over Delegates
August 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CVN-Show-of-Force.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- For all the talk of surveillance cameras, radiation detectors and other high-tech devices, security at the Republican National Convention on Monday boiled down to warm bodies -- in uniform, heavily armed and omnipresent.
Packs of police officers stood guard on streets and subways around Madison Square Garden in a massive show of force expected to continue throughout the four-day event.
The armed camp in midtown Manhattan delighted some delegates.
``New York City is a fortress and I love it,'' New Jersey state GOP Chairman Joseph Kyrillos announced Monday at a delegate breakfast. ``We need to thank the New York City police for all the protection.''
If delegates wanted to offer thanks, they didn't have to look far: Up to 10,000 officers have been deployed by the 36,500-member New York Police Department. That contingent has teamed with federal and state officers to form what some say is the largest security force ever assembled in the city.
Last week, Madison Square Garden, was put under constant surveillance by security cameras, rooftop marksmen and police helicopters. A strike force of plainclothes officers on scooters stand ready to chase down troublemakers.
Buses shuttling delegates from their hotels to the arena pass through checkpoints fortified by hydraulic metal barriers. All vehicles are screened for bombs and other contraband by cameras that provide real-time video images of the undercarriages. Dump trucks filled with sand block normal traffic from the restricted zone.
``I knew security would be tight, but I was surprised at how tight it was,'' said Tre Hargett, a delegate from Memphis, Tenn.
The NYPD has been preparing for more than a year. Many officers received response training for chemical, biological and radiological attacks at a cost of millions of dollars. The NYPD's intelligence division has studied the March bombings in Madrid, which killed 190 people in the days leading up to an election, as a possible template for an attack during the convention and beyond.
``We have the resources, and we're going to use those resources to keep the city safe, and to keep the convention safe,'' said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Thousands of officers helped keep order Sunday at an anti-war protest. About 200 demonstrators were arrested.
``I think we showed that we're prepared, we're flexible, we're mobile and we're going to make the appropriate arrests,'' Kelly said.
On Monday, commuters at Penn Station were greeted by officers posted every few feet, many with bomb-sniffing dogs.
At the convention, Secret Service agents and plainclothes police officers checked credentials. All bags and briefcases were searched.
``The security is just like in airports,'' said Brenda Neal, a delegate from Blacksburg, S.C. ``It makes me feel very safe.''
Associated Press Writers Devlin Barrett and Donna De La Cruz contributed to this report.
--------
Stop! And Be Sniffed
August 30, 2004
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/nyregion/30detect.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The girl in the summer skirt who wants to see the Statue of Liberty seems not to hear the female park officer when the officer says, "Honey, do me a big favor and hold down your skirt."
The girl then saunters into a security portal that looks like something out of Star Trek. A robot voice warns, "Air puffers on!" Aghast, the girl clamps her arms to her sides. The edges of her skirt poof up slightly, as jets of air buffet the girl and dislodge microscopic particles from her. The portal, a miniature chemical laboratory, sifts the particles for traces of a bomb.
At last, the puffers wheeze shut. The robot voice advises, "Wait for green light!" Seconds tick by, and the girl, now certified free of even a particle of a bomb, obeys when the robot voice orders, "Exit!"
In the age of terror, this is how the Statue of Liberty welcomes visitors to her golden door. Since Aug. 3, when Liberty reopened to the public after a period of renovation, the National Park Service has been testing new antiterror technology there.
People puffers are already in place at secure, often classified facilities, like military bases, prisons and nuclear power plants in the United States and abroad.
But if the machines pass muster in trial locations like the Statue of Liberty, they may take their place in many civilian sites alongside baggage scanners and metal detectors at railway stations and airports. A similar puffer may be installed at Kennedy International Airport as early as next month.
Bugs still have to be worked out. Humidity and heat can vex the calibration. Human habits may prompt false alarms (fertilizer from golf courses may implicate nonterrorist golfers). And the machines are costly, up to $150,000 each, at least in limited production.
Still, said Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, "They're overdue for deployment and I'm trying to get them deployed at every airport as soon as possible."
One of the gravest dangers to the public, he said, is the suicide bomber who straps on a block of C-4 explosive the size of a cake of soap. "We don't have good equipment to check passengers," said Mr. Mica, who helped write the legislation that created the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees screening at airports.
But no detection device, however powerful, should be used without other antiterror technology, warns Dr. Thomas S. Hartwick, a former TRW executive who heads the aviation security committee for the National Academy of Sciences.
"It's like looking at a car and just looking at the carburetor," Dr. Hartwick said, "when you ought to be looking at how it functions within the whole engine."
The most sophisticated versions of airport baggage screeners resemble hospital CAT scans. They peer through luggage for substances that have densities similar to those of explosives. Unfortunately, this group includes peanut butter, chocolate and beef, leading to false alarms. But such scanners are better than metal detectors that miss explosives altogether.
Electronic noses trained to sniff out explosives never get tired, unlike canine ones. But, like a good bomb-sniffing dog, an e-nose should be able to detect trace explosives even if they are hidden inside a sausage pizza with extra garlic.
The particles to sniff are, at least, easy to collect. Child or adult, sweating or not, the average human body has a "heat signature" equivalent to that of a 60-watt light bulb. When puffs of air dislodge body particles, body heat alone provides a "convection plume" to convey them. A vacuum guides the particles up to a built-in laboratory that compares the molecular weights of the trapped particles.
Dog noses at best discern 20 or so explosive scents, but e-noses, at least in theory, can detect a far larger array. Alan Gelperin, who works in what is known as electronic olfaction at the Monell Institute in Philadelphia, said that as long as the scents themselves are well defined, "You just buy more chips, a bigger hard drive and a faster processor."
Besides General Electric, which made the Statue of Liberty machine, Smiths Detection, part of a British conglomerate, is the other principal maker of people puffers. Both claim fast processing times (9 seconds per person for Smiths versus 15 for G.E.). And both claim false-alarm rates far lower than the baggage scanner's rate of as much as 25 percent (G.E. claims a rate below 1 percent).
The G.E. machine, the Entryscan, costs $40,000 and the Smiths machine, the Sentinel II, up to $150,000. But the actual price may be lower, depending on how many are ordered and the actual contract negotiated. At any rate, they are far cheaper than X-ray scanners (up to $1 million each) but more costly than metal detectors (up to $15,000 each).
Representative Mica estimates that it would take only $60 million to $70 million to install people puffers at the 29 airports handling three-quarters of the nation's passenger traffic.
Smiths' marquee installation for its portal is the CN Tower in Toronto, a popular tourist attraction. "We're ready for prime time," said William Mawer, president of Smiths Detection North America.
Not so fast, says Robert A. Pryor, who tests security technology for the Transportation Security Administration. Mr. Pryor wants to see test results for the people puffers in different climates, at different airports that have different kinds of travelers.
The agency is conducting trials with the G.E. machine at airports in San Diego; Tampa, Fla.; Providence, R. I.; Rochester; and, soon, Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss. It is considering installing a Smiths machine at Terminal 1 at Kennedy Airport as early as next month.
"Will golfers get stopped more often in Tampa," Mr. Pryor asked, "because fertilizer from golf courses stick to their golf shoes? We should find out."
The people puffers can detect a few particles in a billion, but to do that the machines must be in a controlled environment, in other words, indoors. Humidity can interfere with the trace analysis; the controls must be carefully calibrated daily, even every few hours.
The Statue of Liberty machines, for example, are kept at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit in a white metal enclosure resembling a wedding tent. Extra air conditioners are on standby for especially hot days; extra heaters for especially cold days. One G.E. machine is held in reserve in case the two active machines break down.
"Explosives like heat," said Kelly Collins, a vice president for the G.E. subsidiary that made the puffer at the Statue of Liberty. "They react when it's hot. If you have explosives in a trunk in the Middle East, they are sending off vapors like nobody's business. But in Reykjavik, Iceland, they're nice and quiet. They're not effervescing. So, yes, they're going to be harder to detect."
Would explosive-trace devices have prevented the railway carnage of March 11 in Madrid? Yes, and no, say the manufacturers. If rail stations funneled passengers through a few checkpoints, as in airports, then trace devices would have detected the explosive backpacks and alerted authorities about the hands that handled them.
But it would be impossible to pick out an odor trail of a Madrid bomber in a space as large as Grand Central Terminal or Union Station in Washington, experts say.
"The real problem with rail security, of course, is that you have not just the big stations, but lots of little local stations," said Mr. Mawer of Smiths Detection. "Is it practical to see this sort of machine deployed on every little local station around every big city? It would just be a huge expense."
To avoid such expense, the T.S.A. is researching modified people-sniffers that could be embedded in the train car itself. And to reduce the growing gantlet of detection devices that passengers must endure, it is researching all-in-one detectors for metal and explosives, for both baggage and people.
For its part, Airports Council International-North America, which represents the nation's largest airports, wants to see if the people puffers lead to airport delays.
Ian A. Redhead, who evaluates security technology for the group, sniffs, "It's not time-critical to get into the Statue of Liberty."
--------
Report Faults Hiring of Air Marshals
August 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Air-Marshals.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government hired air marshals who had been involved in cases of misconduct and doesn't hold them to a high enough disciplinary standard, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general says.
``Many federal air marshals were granted access to classified information after displaying questionable judgment, irresponsibility and emotionally unstable behavior,'' Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin said in a report released Monday.
Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary, disagreed with the report's conclusions.
In a written response, Hutchinson said new standards and guidelines have been set for determining whether applicants are suitable to be air marshals, whose job is primarily guarding planes while they are in flight.
Thousands of air marshals were rushed into service after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The exact number is classified and the marshals travel undercover, but pilots say they guard only a small percentage of daily flights.
The Federal Air Marshal Service moved to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the Transportation Security Administration in November.
Disciplinary problems with the air marshals arose in 2003. Managers within the Federal Air Marshal Service subsequently reviewed the files of 161 applicants and found that some had been given pre-hiring top-secret clearances despite financial, employment and criminal problems in the past, the report said.
Of 161 cases, 62 had been accused of domestic violence or assault, drunken driving or sexual harassment, and half of those were arrested at least twice in the past decade.
Others had filed for bankruptcy in the last seven years, misused government resources, been fired or suspended or made to forfeit pay in previous jobs. None of the 161 were subsequently hired, said Dave Adams, a spokesman for the air marshal service.
Ervin's report said 104 air marshals who had been granted security clearances had been involved in 155 cases of misconduct when they worked for the Bureau of Prisons previously. Offenses included falling asleep on duty, verbal abuse, breach of security, physical abuse of an inmate and misuse of government property and credit cards.
Adams said the service began reviewing background checks of all air marshals before the report came out to make sure they meet a higher standard appropriate for law enforcement officers.
Ervin's report also said discipline is sometimes lax in the air marshal service.
Between February and October 2002, there were 753 documented reports of sleeping on duty, lying, testing positive for alcohol or illegal drugs while on the job or losing weapons, the report said. In many cases, air marshals were suspended with pay.
Federal airport screeners would have been fired or suspended without pay for similar offenses, the report said. ``Since air marshals are weapon-carrying law enforcement officers, they can and should be held to a standard of conduct at least as high as that of screeners.''
Hutchinson said many accusations of misconduct were less severe -- for example, for rudeness or tardiness -- than the inspector general reported. He said 101 air marshals were fired between March 2002 and March 2004. Thirty-two more quit rather than be fired, he said.
However, Hutchinson agreed that two air marshals found to have used marijuana probably should have been fired faster. The two marshals were placed on leave in May and June 2003 but were paid through January 2004.
On the Net:
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov
--------
Army of Police Keep Watch Over Delegates
By TOM HAYS
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 5:34 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47031-2004Aug30.html
NEW YORK - For all the talk of surveillance cameras, radiation detectors and other high-tech devices, security at the Republican National Convention on Monday boiled down to warm bodies - in uniform, heavily armed and omnipresent.
Packs of police officers stood guard on streets and subways around Madison Square Garden in a massive show of force expected to continue throughout the four-day event.
The armed camp in midtown Manhattan delighted some delegates.
"New York City is a fortress and I love it," New Jersey state GOP Chairman Joseph Kyrillos announced Monday at a delegate breakfast. "We need to thank the New York City police for all the protection."
If delegates wanted to offer thanks, they didn't have to look far: Up to 10,000 officers have been deployed by the 36,500-member New York Police Department. That contingent has teamed with federal and state officers to form what some say is the largest security force ever assembled in the city.
Last week, Madison Square Garden, was put under constant surveillance by security cameras, rooftop marksmen and police helicopters. A strike force of plainclothes officers on scooters stand ready to chase down troublemakers.
Buses shuttling delegates from their hotels to the arena pass through checkpoints fortified by hydraulic metal barriers. All vehicles are screened for bombs and other contraband by cameras that provide real-time video images of the undercarriages. Dump trucks filled with sand block normal traffic from the restricted zone.
"I knew security would be tight, but I was surprised at how tight it was," said Tre Hargett, a delegate from Memphis, Tenn.
The NYPD has been preparing for more than a year. Many officers received response training for chemical, biological and radiological attacks at a cost of millions of dollars. The NYPD's intelligence division has studied the March bombings in Madrid, which killed 190 people in the days leading up to an election, as a possible template for an attack during the convention and beyond.
"We have the resources, and we're going to use those resources to keep the city safe, and to keep the convention safe," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Thousands of officers helped keep order Sunday at an anti-war protest. About 200 demonstrators were arrested.
"I think we showed that we're prepared, we're flexible, we're mobile and we're going to make the appropriate arrests," Kelly said.
On Monday, commuters at Penn Station were greeted by officers posted every few feet, many with bomb-sniffing dogs.
At the convention, Secret Service agents and plainclothes police officers checked credentials. All bags and briefcases were searched.
"The security is just like in airports," said Brenda Neal, a delegate from Blacksburg, S.C. "It makes me feel very safe."
Associated Press Writers Devlin Barrett and Donna De La Cruz contributed to this report.
-------- immigration / refugees
ICE opens first of five new bases on north border
August 30, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040829-114524-7820r.htm
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has opened the first of five planned air and marine facilities aimed at increasing security along the U.S.-Canada border - where drug smuggling and the entry of illegal aliens have become significant problems.
The Bellingham, Wash., Air and Marine Branch is the first facility designed to augment northern border security with air and marine law enforcement, surveillance and airspace security authorities.
ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said that, at full capacity, the Bellingham station will have 69 federal law enforcement officers, pilots, aircrew and mission-support personnel from the agency's Office of Air and Marine Operations. The facility will have a medium-lift helicopter, light-enforcement helicopter, multirole-enforcement Pilatus PC-12 aircraft, Secure Around Flotation Equipped (SAFE) fast patrol boat and a utility boat.
The Bellingham facility will conduct regular patrols and is equipped for rapid incident response.
Mr. Boyd said a second facility is planned later this year at Plattsburgh, N.Y. The remaining three, he said, will be located in Montana, North Dakota and Michigan.
"The Bellingham air marine branch adds another layer to northern border security," said Mr. Boyd, adding that the facility will employ many of the same enforcement and interdiction capabilities used for decades along the southern U.S. border.
The newest addition to the ICE fleet of more than 130 aircraft is the Pilatus PC-12, a single-engine turbo-prop aircraft that will replace the agency's aging C-12 aircraft. Equipped with an extensive sensor package, the new Pilatus has short-field takeoff and landing capabilities, enabling it to deploy rapidly and operate safely in remote areas.
The SAFE boats were added to the ICE fleet in 2003. They are fabricated marine-grade aluminum hull vessels with a polyethylene closed-cell foam collar that provides stability and buoyancy. Mr. Boyd said the collar system cannot deflate and endanger the crew, making the vessel ideal for performing missions in rough seas and in areas congested with waterborne debris.
The ICE Office of Air and Marine Operations is assigned the task of protecting Americans and critical infrastructure through the coordinated use of air and marine law enforcement. It seeks to detect, interdict and deter terror and criminal acts as they relate to the unlawful movement of people, money and goods across U.S. borders.
Mr. Boyd said the air and marine office has been engaged along the southern border and in the Caribbean for 35 years, but expanded its mission this month to the northern border to "provide critical air and marine law enforcement capability and investigative and surveillance support to other federal agencies for counterterrorism, anti?money-laundering efforts, weapon smuggling, and intelligence operations."
The Office of Air and Marine Operations has a staff of more than 1,000 law enforcement and mission support personnel, a fleet of 130 aircraft - including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft - and 70 vessels, including 39 high-speed interceptor craft.
It operates in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Virginia, Washington state and New York, and maintains a standardization and training facility in Oklahoma.
-------- justice
Secret Court Poses Challenges
Non-Government Litigants Lack Access, Ways to Influence Cases
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45166-2004Aug29?language=printer
The Justice Department has argued in a recent court case that librarians, booksellers and other businesses can easily challenge a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act by appealing to a super-secret court that approves surveillance of terrorists and foreign intelligence agents.
The only problem, according to a document released last week, is that the same court does not allow anyone but government attorneys and agents inside its doors.
The rules governing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also do not include procedures for outside litigants to file memorandums or otherwise influence a case, according to a copy of the rules obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU staff lawyer, said the court rules "do not seem to contemplate the possibility that anyone other than a government attorney may appear before the court," nor do they allow for outside attorneys to file motions to quash the subpoenas the court issues.
The surveillance court was established as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 and has operated in almost total secrecy since then. Justice Department statistics provided to Congress indicate the court approved more than 1,700 searches and seizures last year, eclipsing the number of traditional criminal wiretaps authorized by local and federal courts.
The five-page list of rules gives a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the FISA court, outlining the powers available to each judge and the procedures for applying for warrants and other operational details. The rules were provided to the ACLU by the FBI, which indicated they were the most recent FISA court rules in the agency's possession, Jaffer said.
A duty of the court is to oversee one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, Section 215, which allows the FBI to obtain "tangible things" from businesses during counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. The broadly worded section has raised the ire of librarians, in particular, because it would allow the FBI to seize library records while forbidding the library to publicly reveal the search.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said in September that the section had never been used, but recent court filings indicate the FBI may since have sought to use it.
In a Michigan lawsuit filed by the ACLU, Justice attorneys have argued that anyone targeted under the provision would have the ability to contest the issue. "If and when a Section 215 order is served on these plaintiffs, they will have ample opportunity to challenge it before the court that issues the order (i.e. the FISA Court)," the attorneys wrote in a July brief.
But the court's rules say that only attorneys empowered by the attorney general or government agents may appear before it, and there is no mention of accepting outside motions or briefs.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment last week, citing ongoing litigation.
Patrice McDermott, deputy director of government relations for the American Library Association, said the government's arguments "appear to be a red herring."
"They keep saying you can challenge it, but they have never indicated how anyone could actually do so," she said.
-------- police
With Restraint and New Tactics, March Is Kept Orderly
August 30, 2004
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and AL BAKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30police.html
Plainclothes police officers on stylish Italian motorscooters herded bicycle-riding demonstrators into thick orange nets stretched across intersections. Airborne spy cameras on blimps and helicopters monitored the crowd. Digital video cameras were used to tape arrest scenes and collect evidence for later use in court. A military-inspired sound device was ready to disperse crowds with shouted orders or painful blasts of noise.
After more than a year of planning and training, the New York Police Department oversaw yesterday's giant protest march by combining traditional methods of crowd control - from undercover officers who infiltrated the crowd to a huge show of force - with a variety of new techniques that clearly took some of the protesters by surprise.
The combined methods appeared effective at keeping yesterday's marchers where the police wanted them to be, and even protest advocates praised the police for their overall restraint, noting in particular that individual officers did not allow themselves to be provoked by the very few attempts to incite them.
When one protester threw what looked like feces at a row of young police officers on Seventh Avenue outside Madison Square Garden, they stood frozen and did not flinch, even to wipe away what turned out to be pieces of cardboard. When a group of protesters climbed atop some construction scaffolding, officers coaxed them down, then let them leave without arrest.
This was part of the strategy that is beginning to define one of the greatest tests the Police Department has seen in recent years, not only dealing with successive days of protests, but doing so as journalists from all over the world are watching. Officers were drilled on teamwork, trained to respond to a supervisor's orders and never to react to a simple taunt.
When officers were ordered to make arrests, they acted quickly with precision, taking more than 200 people into custody yesterday, though at times over the weekend they moved so quickly that, it appears, they also swept up innocent bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Even some of the Police Department's most persistent critics reluctantly gave the police good marks, though several said most of the credit for good behavior belonged to the demonstrators.
"A quarter of a million people made a commitment to a peaceful legal march," said one of yesterday's marchers, Ronald Kuby, the civil rights lawyer from New York who gave his own unofficial estimate of the crowd size. "They were the ones who kept the peace. They were the ones who were well behaved. So this notion that the police did a good job is true only to the extent that the demonstrators themselves had a powerful commitment to keep this demonstration peaceful and legal."
The greatest show of force came at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 34th Street, where the march turned east after moving uptown. On one corner more than a dozen officers sat on horseback, while dozens of other uniformed officers lined the streets. Motorcycles, scooters and vans filled the pavement just beyond the border of the protest zone.
A few yards away, at around 3 p.m., a fire broke out when a papier-mâché float made to look like a dragon was set ablaze. The police quickly blocked off the route at 34th Street and Avenue of the Americas and put the flames out with fire extinguishers. Several people were arrested, one of whom was charged with arson.
For all the preparations to deal with the crowd, it appeared that the police forgot at least one essential detail - water for the officers who were weighed down with body armor and riot helmets. Officers had to rely on their supervisors to run into local convenience stores to buy water.
Still, over and over, as hundreds of thousands of people marched yesterday, up Seventh Avenue, across 34th Street and down Fifth Avenue, the police showed restraint, turning away, for example, when they were mocked for failing to secure a desired raise from the city. At one point, a large group of demonstrators surrounded a patrol car, waving anarchist flags and taunting the two officers inside. The police officers hit their siren, backed up and drove off. A few uniformed officers arrived and ordered the protesters onto the sidewalks, and the group just melted away.
There were red lines, however, and anyone on a bicycle seemed to be on the wrong side of that line. At a large bike protest on Friday, the police showed they were resolved to keep the bikes from blocking traffic, and they did that again yesterday. Bicycle-riding protesters said that the people in civilian clothing (who they assumed to be police) would ride into the pack of cyclists to slow them down. Protesters said the police strategy seemed to be contain, surge and arrest.
One incident involved a group of cyclists a few blocks away from the parade route. Chris Habib, 29, said police scooters sought to move the cyclists off the street by nudging their tires. He said that as the cyclists reached Seventh Avenue traveling west on 37th Street, they slowed, facing a dilemma. Police blocked any turn south and, the bikers believed that turning north on the southbound avenue would result in instant arrest.
Several bystanders said the police arrested people who were not protesting but happened to be in the area when the police swooped down.
At the Second Avenue Deli, Alexander Pincus, 28, and Isa Wipfli, 29, had just picked up a dinner of matzo ball soup, pirogi, pastrami and corned beef for Mr. Pincus's girlfriend when they stepped outside and saw swarms of police officers and bicyclists. Mr. Pincus said he and Mr. Wipfli approached a police officer looking for a way out.
"They took our bikes and handcuffed us," Mr. Wipfli said. "We were like, 'Look at the food. It's still warm.' They wouldn't listen to anything we said."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Michael Wilson, Patrick Healy, Randal C. Archibold, Joyce Purnick and Ann Farmer.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Vietnam Marks Independence with Pardons for Prisoners
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-vietnam-release.html
HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam has released nearly 9,000 prisoners, including 10 inmates whose cases it says had drawn international attention, as part of traditional pardons granted ahead of independence celebrations on September 2.
Foreign ministry officials told a news conference the release of the 8,611 prisoners reflected their ``good rehabilitation records'' and the ``humane tradition'' of Vietnam.
Fifty-one foreigners were among those released.
``For some cases for which many countries have expressed their concern, on this occasion 10 will be released or receive commutation,'' said Deputy Foreign Minister Le Van Bang.
Diplomats who saw the list of the 10 said they recognized only a few names -- including those of Nguyen Ha Hai and Ho Van Trong, members of a dissident Hoa Hao Buddhist sect. The list said Hai died on June 14, 2004, two weeks after his release.
Bang, a former envoy to Washington, repeated Hanoi's refrain that ``in Vietnam there are no prisoners of conscience, no dissidents, no one convicted and put into prison related to human rights.'' Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch as well as western governments have called for the release of those imprisoned after criticizing Hanoi in public forums or on the Internet or for practicing non-sanctioned religions.
Of the foreigners to be released, 28 are from northern neighbor China, 13 from Laos, six from Cambodia, three from Australia and one from Japan. Their offences included spying and breaching Vietnam's national security laws.
In 2002, the last time the state issued pardons, it released more than 9,000 prisoners.
Those seeking pardons must meet certain criteria including paying any fines that have been assessed and complete at least one third of their terms.
Those sentenced to life in prison must serve at least 10 years behind bars, while those sentenced to death and later commuted to life must have completed a minimum of 12 years of their prison term. There are no available statistics on how many are imprisoned in Vietnam.
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
Reed Confirms Fees From Indian Casino Lobbyists
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45348-2004Aug29.html
NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- Ralph Reed, Southeast regional chairman of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and former executive director of the Christian Coalition, confirmed on Sunday that he accepted more than $1 million in fees from a lobbyist and a public relations specialist whose work on behalf of American Indian casinos prompted a federal investigation.
In addition to his role running the campaign in the Southeast, Reed is a liaison to the Christian evangelical community, and many of its leaders are adamantly opposed to gambling. Reed has been widely credited with leading the political mobilization of the Christian right since the late 1980s.
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and public relations executive Michael Scanlon -- the two men who paid the fees to Reed -- are subjects of a wide-ranging federal probe with political ramifications in Congress and within the Republican Party.
The inquiry involves at least $45 million in lobbying and public relations fees, alleged misuse of Indian tribal funds, possible illegal campaign contributions and possible tax code violations.
Federal officials have assembled a criminal task force from the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Justice Department's public integrity section, the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Interior Department inspector general's office, according to officials familiar with the investigation. The task force is looking into payments that Abramoff and Scanlon received from an array of clients, including 11 wealthy Indian tribes that operate gambling casinos.
Task force investigators have subpoenaed records at Reed's firm, Century Strategies, along with records of many other subcontractors for Abramoff and Scanlon, according to sources familiar with aspects of the inquiry.
Atlanta-based Century Strategies worked on behalf of casinos seeking to prevent other tribes from opening competitive gambling facilities. Century Strategies mobilized ministers and Christian activists to lobby against the new facilities.
Scanlon's company paid Reed $1.23 million, according to sources familiar with the transactions. The two law firms Abramoff worked for, Greenberg Traurig LLP and Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, paid fees to Reed and Century Strategies, but the amounts were not immediately available.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Reed said: "I have worked for decades to oppose the expansion of casino gambling, and as a result of that, Century Strategies has worked with broad coalitions to oppose casino expansion. We are proud of the work we have done. It is consistent not only with my beliefs but with the beliefs of the grassroots citizens that we mobilized. And at no time was Century Strategy ever retained by, or worked on behalf of, any casino or casino company."
Asked if he had been aware of the clients paying Abramoff and Scanlon, Reed said, "While we were clearly aware that Greenberg Traurig had certain tribal clients, we were not aware of every specific client or interest."
The Reed-Scanlon-Abramoff connections were first reported by Shawn Martin of the American Press in Lake Charles, La., in recent coverage of a struggle for power within the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, one of Abramoff's and Scanlon's clients. The Louisiana Coushatta Tribe was seeking to prevent development of potentially competitive casinos by the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas and the Jena Band of Choctaws.
Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney '04 Committee, declined Sunday to comment on Reed's activities. "I would refer any questions about Century Strategies to Century Strategies," he said. Schmidt said the campaign refuses to accept contributions from political action committees associated with casinos.
Richard D. Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, declined to comment specifically about Reed's dealings, saying he was not familiar with the specifics. Land said he would not accept money from gambling interests, saying, "It would be hypocritical of me as a Southern Baptist and as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention." He described gambling as a "dangerous vice" with "antisocial effects on those least able to absorb those effects."
In February, The Washington Post reported that Indian tribes had paid Abramoff and Scanlon $45 million. Some of those tribes have contributed to prominent members of Congress. On March 2, Greenberg Traurig announced that Abramoff had "resigned." In a statement, the firm described Abramoff's "personal transactions and related conduct" as "unacceptable to the firm."
Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this article from Washington.
-------- us politics
9/11 families split on GOP convention
August 30, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040829-114516-5322r.htm
NEW YORK - Jimmy Boyle lost his son, and David Potorti lost his brother in the September 11 attacks. Both are in New York for the Republican National Convention, but for very different reasons.
Mr. Boyle, who lives in the New York suburbs, is here to lend support to President Bush, while Mr. Potorti wants to see him ousted from office.
Mr. Bush's standing among the relatives of the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001, has been complicated by subsequent events, notably the war in Iraq and the report by the bipartisan September 11 commission that criticized the Clinton and Bush administrations for failing to grasp the threat posed by al Qaeda.
Mr. Boyle, whose son Michael, a New York City firefighter, died at the World Trade Center, supports Mr. Bush and the war.
"I think this guy is confronting the problem," he said.
Mr. Potorti, whose brother James was killed in the attacks, is part of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Made up of about 130 people who lost loved ones, the group gathered in Central Park yesterday to criticize the war. It has planned other events around the city this week.
"We have a real problem with the responses of this administration to the September 11 attacks," said Mr. Potorti, of Cary, N.C.
Another relatives' group, WTC Families for Proper Burial, will gather Wednesday at ground zero to call for the removal of the fine dust remains of their loved ones from a landfill in Staten Island, where tons of debris was sorted.
Diane Horning of Scotch Plains, N.J., whose son Matthew was killed, said the convention's cleanup costs alone would be enough to pay for reburial of the dust, referred to as "the fines."
"It's horrifying to me to think that if they had chosen some other location, they could have used that money to bury the dead," she said.
Republican convention planners have been tight-lipped about the specifics of their September 11 tribute. Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will speak on the opening night and cite the courage shown in the aftermath of the attacks. Some relatives of the victims have been invited to attend.
Democrats have accused the Republicans of using the tragedy for votes by holding the convention in New York and referring to the terrorist attack in campaign ads. The Democratic convention in Boston had its own September 11-themed remembrance, which didn't sit well with Carie Lemack, whose mother died aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower.
The Democrats' tribute upset her enough that she wrote a letter to the chairmen of both parties, Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ed Gillespie, asking them to tone down any reference to the victims of the attacks.
"I don't think that any images or portrayals of grief are appropriate at a political convention," said Miss Lemack, one of the most active September 11 relatives.
"We don't want anyone to be exploiting the grief of the families for their political gain," she said. "The best way they can honor those who were murdered on that day is to make sure Americans are safer. You don't do that by plastering images up on a screen; you do that by discussing the 9/11 commission recommendations."
--------
Florida Voting Under Microscope Again
August 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Florida-Voting.html
MIAMI (AP) -- Cheryl Roberts was impressed with Florida's new voting machines in the 2002 primary, when she cast an electronic ballot for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride. But a series of computer glitches -- including startling cases of corrupted or missing data -- has undermined her faith. So for Tuesday's primary in Florida, Roberts is turning to an absentee ballot so Broward County has a paper record of her vote.
``Everyone is psychologically wary of elections this year,'' said Roberts, a field coordinator for the American Civil Liberties of South Florida. ``My biggest concern is whether or not voters' intentions will be counted by elections departments.''
Whether paperless touchscreen voting terminals will accurately record people's votes -- and whether those votes could be recounted in a close election -- are open questions in Florida, epicenter of the 2000 presidential election fiasco. Polls in the crucial swing state show a dead heat between President Bush and Democrat John Kerry.
On Tuesday, voters in 15 of Florida's 67 counties will cast ballots on touchscreen computers that do not produce paper records of every ballot. Voters in those counties -- including Broward and Miami-Dade -- make up more than half of the state's registered voters.
Voter advocates promise to scrutinize election results to see if tallies match exit polls, threatening to sue over suspicious results. Computer programmers say touchscreens, which as many as 50 million Americans are eligible to use in the November election, are vulnerable to software glitches, hackers, power outages and other problems.
``I'm very worried that if the election is very, very close, the outcome will not be believed by a lot of people,'' said Avi Rubin, professor of computer science and technical director of the Information Security Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
More than 100,000 touchscreens have been installed nationwide, particularly in California, Maryland, Georgia, and battleground states of Florida, New Mexico and Nevada.
Gov. Jeb Bush and his top elections official, Secretary of State Glenda Hood, say touchscreens are secure and recountable. Big manufacturers such as Diebold Inc. and Election Systems & Software Inc. say touchscreens minimize errors such as overvoting, when the accidental selection of two candidates disqualifies a ballot.
Touchscreens can toggle between different languages and can be equipped with headphones, making them easier for nonnative English speakers, the illiterate and visually impaired.
``I do think that it is the best available system when you consider all the facts, including voting rights issues,'' said Dan Tokaji, assistant professor of law at Ohio State University.
But shocking problems have undercut attempts to promote touchscreens -- once billed as the antidote to the hanging chad of Florida's outdated punch-card machines.
A study by the American Civil Liberties Union after the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2002 concluded that 8 percent of the votes on Miami-Dade County's touchscreen machines in 31 precincts were lost.
Audit logs of ES&S machines deployed in 11 Florida counties were corrupted by a software flaw caused by low batteries. ES&S and state officials issued a software patch this summer and said the mishap wouldn't affect elections.
Miami-Dade County officials revealed last month that audit logs from the contested 2002 gubernatorial primary, first believed lost in computer crashes, were temporarily misplaced. The logs are a record of everything a machine does from the time it's turned on until it is shut off.
``We're putting all our faith in these machines to work,'' said Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a Tallahassee-based government watchdog group. ``Florida voters suffered trauma in 2000 and basically we need to give them the confidence that that won't happen again.''
For many voter advocates, the biggest worry is not election day but the prospect of a recount.
In a typical touchscreen recount, a registrar reproduces only the vote total delivered by each machine. Critics consider such numbers meaningless because they don't show whether software glitches or hacks resulted in misrecorded votes in the first place.
A voter-verifiable paper ballot, they say, is a better way to prove voters' intentions. But only a handful of touchscreens -- including some in Nevada -- produce paper records of every ballot.
The situation got murkier Friday in Florida, when a judge ruled that Hood's rule preventing manual recounts on touchscreen machines was against state law, which requires hand recounts in certain close elections. That could mean that touchscreens would need to be able to print paper records.
Hood was considering appealing the judge's decision, which would automatically keep the rule in place for now.
Electronic voting was hailed as the answer to the 2000 presidential election, when questions over voter intent led to recounts that lasted 36 days. President Bush won a 537-vote victory in Florida, giving him the presidency.
Gov. Bush's own Republican party recently paid for a flier criticizing the new technology and urging some voters in South Florida to use absentee ballots to make sure their vote counts. Bush defended touchscreens and said he did not endorse the mailing, which echoed Democrats and civil rights activists, who urge voters to cast paper ballots.
``The new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount,'' the flier read. ``Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today.''
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Acidic clouds still drifting from southern Indiana power plant
August 30, 2004
The Associated Press
http://www.indystar.com/articles/3/174497-3623-127.html
MOUNT CARMEL, ILL. -- Residents of this small, southern Illinois town are still coughing months after equipment that was supposed to stop air pollution from a nearby power plant backfired.
"I thought I had my asthma under control, but I had trouble on the days when those clouds hit us," said retired department store manager Bob Bethards, 74, referring to the acidic, bluish mist that has plagued Mount Carmel since June. "I'm usually not one to complain, but if I'm having trouble, I'm sure others are, too."
The town's residents began noticing the mist more than two months ago after Cinergy Corp.'s Gibson Station power plant near Princeton, Ind., installed equipment to cut nitrogen oxide emissions. But the equipment, which cost Cinergy $600 million to install, created clouds of concentrated sulfuric acid that drifted across the Wabash River and fell on Mount Carmel.
The plant is now burning low-sulfur coal and testing different chemical injections to try to stop the clouds from forming. The state has also filed a lawsuit to make sure the company fixes the problem.
Cinergy engineers are still trying to figure out why the problem is happening at the plant some 30 miles north of Evansville, Ind.
"Nobody wants this problem taken care of more than us," said Bob Batdorf, the Gibson plant manager. "We're part of the community. I go to church over there. I told my folks, 'If you goof, I'm dead.'"
The Gibson plant releases about 1.5 million pounds of sulfuric acid each year, but it usually dissipates in the air and isn't considered a problem. But when it doesn't dissipate and falls toward the ground, the acid can burn skin and trigger asthma attacks.
Bill Maples, the town's economic development director, said he's learned to head indoors when the bluish mist approaches.
"All of a sudden I started to gag and it felt like my eyes were bugging out," Maples said. "You don't want to be outside when it comes our way."
It's a problem that other power plants that burn high-sulfur coal have also been facing, particularly in the Ohio River Valley, said Chad Whiteman, deputy director of the Institute of Clean Air Companies, a trade group of firms that install pollution controls.
"These blue plumes have turned into a public relations disaster for the industry," said Rob Moser, a partner at Codan Development, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based company that specializes in removing sulfurous mist from smokestacks. "They can deal with it, but these companies aren't going to deal with it unless somebody makes them."
Norm Brunson, a city commissioner who owns a barbershop in downtown Mount Carmel, said the blue haze has become the talk of the town.
"Most of us got C's or D's in chemistry, but even I know there's a problem when they spend megabucks out there and we don't see any of the benefits," Brunson said. "I'm sure they are trying to be a good neighbor, but it gets to a point where you can poison people too much."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Undermining free speech
August 30, 2004
Washington Times
By Nat Hentoff
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040829-093402-7311r.htm
I remember the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover, who urgently believed that Americans actively protesting against government policies, including those of the FBI, required surveillance and chilling visitations by its agents to counsel them that certain speech resulted in unpleasant consequences for them. Current intimidation of protesters by Robert Mueller's FBI brings back my memories of the 1950s and 1960s.
Back then, FBI agents came to see me, demanding the sources for my criticisms of the Bureau. Knowing my First Amendment rights, I politely sent them away. They did not return.
These days, however, FBI agents before last month's Democratic convention and this week's Republican convention have - with particular zeal, as described in an Aug. 19 editorial by the Denver Post - "gone about their mission aggressively, with little regard for basic rights and without evidence that the people they are trying to dissuade are actually intending any criminal activity."
The editorial cites "a 21-year-old intern with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker public service group that once won the Nobel Peace Prize," who "says she and her friends were questioned even though they [had] no plans to go to New York."
And an Aug. 19 report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells of "three men from Kirksville, Mo., [who] were so unnerved at being followed by agents and called to a grand jury here last month that they abandoned plans for peaceful protest outside the Democratic National Convention in Boston." They now refuse to have their identities disclosed.
Denise Lieberman, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director for eastern Missouri, told me that the subpoenas required the three men to appear on July 29 - the very date they had planned to be in Boston before they decided not to go.
After they appeared before the grand jury for about five minutes, no charges were filed against them.
The FBI, says Ms. Lieberman, had asked them if they had knowledge of anyone planning "criminally disorderly conduct" at the Democratic or Republican convention, presidential debates or other places. "The fact that they did not answer the questions," Ms. Lieberman told the Post-Dispatch, "may have raised the red flag and gotten them the subpoena."
Because of the appallingly low level of educational instruction about the history of our Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, in school systems around the country, it's likely that these protestors didn't know they had a First Amendment right not to answer the agents' questions before they were subpoenaed.
Now, adds Ms. Lieberman, "they're quite shaken and terrified by the experience. They're concerned if they speak out, they're going to be targeted further."
Part of that "experience"included being conspicuously followed by four FBI cars for five days, including when they went to the grocery store and the movies. Moreover, the homeowners of the house they stayed at in St. Louis were followed to work by the FBI. One of them - pulled aside by a supervisor - felt his job was on the line. What a chilling touch of Castro's Havana right in St. Louis.
As similar reports of intimidating FBI tracking in other cities kept arriving, Cassandra Chandler, assistant director of the FBI's Office of Public Affairs in Washington, said: "The FBI is not monitoring groups or interviewing individuals unless we receive intelligence that such individuals or groups may be planning violent and disruptive criminal activity or have knowledge of such activity."
The key worrisome phrase for civil libertarians is "may be planning." As ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told the Aug. 18 New York Times: "It's not enough for the FBI to say that there's the potential for criminal activity. That's not the legal threshold, and if that were really [the legal threshold], they could investigate anybody."
In Kansas City, the Associated Press reported on Aug. 19 that 21-year-old Nate Hoffman, a University of Missouri-Kansas City student, was approached by FBI agents at a coffeehouse. They asked whether he or anybody he knew planned to engage in violence at the Democratic conventions in Boston. Mr. Hoffman knew enough about the Constitution to refuse to answer without a lawyer.
"They told me," says Hoffman, "that in their experience that when somebody didn't want to talk to them that meant they probably had something to hide."
Speaking for a growing number of young Americans, Mr. Hoffman notes: "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."
During the presidential debates, will anyone ask the candidates about these visits commemorating the reign of J. Edgar Hoover? On Aug. 20, Attorney General John Ashcroft not surprisingly told the New York Times that any "suggestions that the interviews were aimed at stifling protests were an 'outrageous distortion.' "
Would James Madison agree?
----
NYC marchers slam Bush
More than 300 people have been arrested for disorderly conduct
Sunday 29 August 2004,
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6B854BCB-36C6-4BC7-9B10-359F4F9E4B92.htm
More than 250,000 demonstrators have marched in the streets of New York City to protest against President George Bush's policies over the Iraq war, one day before the Republican national convention.
The marchers were to pass the Madison Square Garden convention site on Eighth Avenue as Republicans and visitors converged on New York for the gathering that is expected to culminate with the party renominating Bush for president.
The start of the march on Sunday took on a carnival-like atmosphere with people carrying large and colourful banners, shouting "No More Bush" and beating drums in temperatures hitting 29C.
Many held banners and signs such as "Say No to the War Economy", "Bush Must Go" and "Bush lied, thousands died" in opposition to the war.
The Bush administration said it invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he had weapons of mass destruction that threatened America's security and he refused to disarm. But no such stockpiles have been found.
New York City police said more than 300 people had been arrested as of Saturday night for disorderly conduct and convention-related incidents.
Denied permit
The circular route was to take the marchers through central Manhattan and activists vowed to defy a ban on rallying in Central Park, the city's largest open space, later in the day.
Protesters were denied a permit to gather in Central Park after the march because they might damage the grass, city officials said. But organisers of some groups urged people to make their way to the park for a "people's picnic" after dispersing peacefully at the end of the march.
Organisers and a series of prominent speakers including civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, film maker Michael Moore and some New York elected officials boosted the protesters with speeches before the start of the event.
Call to withdraw
"Today, we send our message," long-time activist Leslie Cagan said. "We come from all walks of life ... from cities and towns across this nation and together we will march and in a resounding, clear voice we will say 'no' to the Bush agenda."
Cagan and other speakers called for the US to immediately withdraw its troops from Iraq.
Kelly Doherty, a military police sergeant who served in Iraq for a year and helped establish Iraq Veterans Against the War, said Iraqis and Americans had been "dehumanised" by the conflict.
"This is also dehumanising United States' troops who are also having their sense of patriotism and loyalty perverted and used by an administration that would send our women and men to fight, die and kill for lies," Doherty said.
Tightest security
Security around the arena has been called the tightest in the history of US political events with thousands of police officers and Secret Service agents on guard.
Streets were closed and concrete barriers put in place to deter car or truck bombs amid warnings from the government that al-Qaida or other groups might attack the US during the election season.
Sunday's march took place as 50,000 visitors arrived in New York City for the four-day convention to nominate the president for a second term in the White House. He is to face Democratic candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in the November election.
Exploiting Olympics
Meanwhile, one of the US' biggest Olympic hero accused Bush of exploiting the Athens Games for his own political advantage. Nine-time Olympic gold medallist Carl Lewis condemned Bush for using the presence of Iraqi and Afghan teams in Athens to boost his election campaign.
"'I felt that was disingenuous. It is funny that we boycotted the 1980 Games [in Moscow] in support of Afghanistan, and now we're bombing Afghanistan," he told the Athens News on Saturday.
"Of course, we've invaded Iraq and are in there and are using it for political gain. It bewilders me and I understand why the Iraqi players are offended."
Lewis was referring to comments made by Iraq's Olympic football team who criticised Bush for using their remarkable achievement of placing fourth in the tournament, to highlight his presidency.
"My problems are not with the American people," Iraq's coach, Adnan Hamad told a monthly sports magazine.
"They are with what America has done in Iraq: Destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"
----
Republican Conventioneers Met By Giant Protest March
August 30, 2004
NEW YORK, New York, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-30-03.asp
"There were one million of us in the streets to demand the defeat of a sitting president and a rejection of his agenda," crowed one jubilant demonstrator who was part of a two mile long march through the streets of Manhattan Sunday on the eve of the Republican National Convention. March organizers estimated that about half that number of people took to the streets, but called the march, "big, very big."
Police officers in riot gear lined the march route, but the New York Police Department gave no official figures for attendance at the legal, permitted march.
The march was led by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Danny Glover and the Reverend Jesse Jackson past Madison Square Garden where the Republican National Convention gets underway this morning.
Carrying 1,000 flag-draped cardboard boxes resembling coffins to symbolize U.S. troops killed in Iraq, the marchers accused President George W. Bush of waging an unjust war over Middle East oil. They charged that the Bush administration is stripping away the country's environmental protections in favor of handing natural resources to corporate supporters.
They chanted, "No More Years," a reference to Bush supporters' who chant "Four More Years" at their rallies, and many carried signs saying "Bush Lies."
Lawyers acting as legal observers with the demonstrators say 180 people were arrested along the march route and at various other protest events acrosss the city on Sunday.
Orange plastic netting was used to entrap and arrest people in groups along the march route. The entire block from 25th to 26th streets was penned in about five o'clock Sunday evening. People were beaten with nightsticks, eyewitnesses said, while protesters chanted "shame."
The march was interrupted several times by police blocking demonstrators, or putting out several fires that were started along the route, including the burning of a large paper mache dragon's head that was torched by protesters outside Madison Square Garden.
The National Lawyers Guild, New York City Chapter, says arrested protestors are being held in jail for up to 34 hours, only to be released without charges, and the police department has been refusing attorneys who have asked to see their clients. There have also been reports of failure to provide necessary medical attention to arrestees.
Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in New York Sunday and spoke at an event on Ellis Island with New York Governor George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Generations of American immigrants have landed first on Ellis Island, and Cheney said, "America is still the land of golden dreams, and it's the duty of our generation to make sure that our children and our children's children have all the opportunities that we have enjoyed - and more."
"My job here this week," he said, "is to tell people all across America about how strong and steadfast our President is - how compassionate and concerned. He is exactly the leader we need for these times. And we need him for four more years."
Cheney will be the featured speaker at the convention on Wednesday evening. He will speak about the Bush administration's record of "creating opportunity for all Americans and the President's vision for spreading freedom around the world to ensure our safety at home," which is the theme of the convention.
But protesters across the East River back in Manhattan view Cheney as the reason that his former company, Halliburton, has secured billion dollar no bid contracts in Iraq. They view the vice president as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Billionaires For Bush performed a street theater protest just south of Times Square Sunday evening. This self-described "grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies," say "we'll give whatever it takes to ensure four more years of putting profit over people. After all, we know a good president when we buy one."
Many of the protesters expressed their anger over the Bush administration's violations of the civil rights of ordinary Americans.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with criticism for his comments two weeks ago in a meeting with Republican National Convention volunteers in Manhattan that people who "express themselves" are exercising a "privilege."
"If we start to abuse our privileges, then we lose them, and nobody wants that," the mayor told the volunteers.
Protesters slammed Bloomberg for ignoring the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees "the freedom of speech, and of the press; and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Protest groups complain that federal agents and city police have been interrogating activists, monitoring Internet sites, dropping in unannounced on organizational meetings, and breaking up peaceful film showings.
Welcoming Republican delegates to New York, 2004 Republican National Convention CEO Bill Harris said on Friday, "New York provides the most outstanding backdrop to showcase President George W. Bush and his vision for a safer world and more hopeful America."
But across the city the picture is different with hundreds of protesters trying to get their messages of discontent across the convention delegates while police attempt to pen them behind chain-link fences called "free speech zones."
On Saturday evening, bell ringers with Ringout.org surrounded the World Trade Center site to "ring out the Republicans." They distributed thousands of small bells, and many people brought their own larger bells.
The event was orchestrated to ring at least 2,749 bells, one for each of the victims of the Sepetember 11 terrorist attacks, and in total the group rang their bells together 2,749 times.
Bell ringing event organizer and composer Pauline Oliveros said, "This is a memorial for all those killed by violence around the world."
On Friday, about 5,000 bicyclists with Critical Mass rode through mid-town Manhattan to demonstrate against Bush environmental policies. A monthly international event held in cities on six continents, Critical Mass occurs on the last Friday of each month to dramatize the rights of bicyclists and pedestriansand the toxic levels of air and noise pollution that cars create for cities.
Police officers arrested 264 Critical Mass cyclists on charges of obstructing governmental administration, unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct at various locations around Union Square Park.
The protesters were not permitted to hold a formal rally in Central Park on Sunday. The group United for Peace and Justice was denied a permit by the City of New York over worries that the grass might be destroyed by the 250,000 people expected. State Supreme Court Justice Jacqueline Silbermann upheld the city's position, but on Sunday many people streamed into the park in an informal manner, although no formal rally was held.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, 71 percent of New York City voters say demonstrators should be allowed in Central Park.
The poll of 822 New York City registered voters taken August 20 - 24 found that 81 percent approve of lawful demonstrations during the convention, and 68 percent approve of non-violent civil disobedience.
Ninety-five percent disapprove of violent demonstrations, while four percent approve. Fifty percent disapprove of the FBI questioning people who plan to demonstrate, while 44 percent approve.
Those polled give Mayor Bloomberg a split 44 - 42 percent job approval rating, but disapprove of President Bush 70 - 25 percent.
"The city is rolling out the red carpet for the Republican delegates, but most New Yorkers would roll out the green carpet of Central Park for the anti-Republican demonstrators," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"Lawful demonstrations - even non-violent civil disobedience - are a time-honored New York tradition and still widely supported. But 19 out of 20 New Yorkers draw the line at violence."
----
200,000 in N.Y. Protest
Bush President and GOP Convention Unwelcome, Demonstrators Say
By Michael Powell and Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45279-2004Aug29?language=printer
NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- By the tens of thousands, demonstrators marched, chanted -- "No More Years!" -- and danced through the streets of Manhattan on Sunday, voicing their anger with President Bush, the war in Iraq and the Republicans' decision to hold a national convention in this most Democratic of urban bastions.
Hundreds of police officers in riot gear lined the sidewalks, SWAT vans idled, and police helicopters whirred overhead. But the protest was as peaceful as it was vast. More than 200,000 demonstrators, according to a police estimate, packed dozens of blocks along Seventh Avenue and snaked down side streets.
Organizers with United for Peace and Justice decided to forgo a rally and simply march through Midtown. (Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
The march drew protesters from many corners. Printers and emergency medical technicians rode early-morning buses from Lancaster, Pa.; suburban peace groups took the 9:29 a.m. commuter train from Bedford Hills; and a group of students traveled overland from northern Texas, hitchhiking the last 800 miles after their bus broke down in Ohio. Then there was Billionaires for Bush, a satirical group outfitted in cocktail dresses and silk gloves, tuxes and top hats and cigarette holders. They waved placards emblazoned: "It's a Class War -- and We're winning" and "No Justice? No problem!"
"I'm here to protest Bush's horrendous economic principles," said Kathy Merletti, decked out in a champagne-colored gown, lace gloves and a parasol, and calling herself Emma Goldmine. "After this, I'm going to be playing croquet in Central Park."
While passions ran high, the mood was often celebratory. As the marchers inched along Seventh Avenue, New Yorkers waved from windows and rooftops, and three gay couples enjoying Sunday brunch at the Eros Cafe in the Chelsea neighborhood raised glasses of orange juice to salute.
There were scattered arrests at the edges of the protest, but police reported no violence. The march route formed a giant U, running two miles north past Madison Square Garden before hooking south again another two miles to Union Square, where radicals and labor organizers have declaimed for more than a century.
Many New Yorkers spoke of deeply felt indignation that the Republicans would come to their city, as though the convention starting Monday were a slap in their faces. As marchers passed Madison Square Garden, they often erupted in chants of "Liar! Liar!"
Kate Abell, a public school teacher and mother who lives in Chelsea, stood in the sharp, hot sun of midday holding this sign: "My son watched the towers fall from his school. I don't feel safer."
"The Republicans have come here, to a place where they don't have a base, for one reason: To play with the image of 9/11," Abell said. "They are using fear and death to make Bush's policies seem more palatable."
Organizers with United for Peace and Justice had wanted to end their march with a rally in Central Park. But Republican Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg demurred, saying that so many protesters might damage the park's newly refurbished lawn. City officials instead offered the demonstrators a rally spot along a treeless stretch of the West Side Highway.
In the end, the organizers decided to forgo a rally and simply march through Midtown.
"We couldn't be happier," said Leslie Cagan, the march's lead organizer. "People came to say no to the Bush agenda with all the diversity of our neighborhoods. We won the streets of New York."
After the march ended, several thousand demonstrators rode the subways north to Central Park's Great Lawn, where they had picnics, watched political theater by the "Mission Accomplicated" troupe and registered a peaceful protest against the city's refusal of a permit to congregate there.
Republican officials have suggested in recent days that Democratic Party activists were fueling the protest. It is hard to overstate how many people vote Democratic in this city; in the 2000 election, 1.6 million New Yorkers voted for Democrat Al Gore, while 398,000 voted for Bush.
There were thousands of "John Kerry for President" pins in evidence Sunday, but there was no real sign of a Democratic Party hand at play. Democratic strategists, in fact, have talked of holding their breath, lest the protests dissolve into violence or the Republicans turn them into caricatures of the left. March organizers were critical of Kerry for voting to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq. And Kerry might prefer to eschew the four-member "Communists for Kerry" contingent, whose placards advocated a "France First!" foreign policy.
The marchers were by turns humorous, angry and somber. They were momentarily silent as men in white shirts and ties and women in dresses passed bearing 1,000 flag-draped cardboard boxes resembling coffins, representative of the Americans and Iraqis who have died since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
Elsewhere, a half-dozen Iraq war veterans in combat boots and desert fatigues marched and swapped stories about buddies still in Iraq. Kelly Doughtery, who walked between the broad shoulders of her male comrades, had returned from Iraq in February, after serving a year with the military police. She came here from Colorado.
"I saw that people were hoping their lives would improve, and we didn't allow that," she said. "When you invade and occupy a country, it stifles people's ability to help themselves."
Many families marched together, from mothers pushing baby carriages to high school students walking alongside their fathers. Janet Braun-Reinitz, a New York muralist, marched with her son Dave, a comedian who lives in Los Angeles, and her daughter Laura, who came in from California's Silicon Valley.
Sisters Vicki and Danielle Leifer passed out voter registration cards while their mother, Jacqueline, held a poster saying, "If you think voting doesn't matter, then why did Republicans try so hard to prevent black Americans from voting?"
The crowd was more than 90 percent white, which did not go unnoticed by the Leifers. "This is a very white, middle-class protest," Vicki said. "There's such a sense of disenfranchisement in the black community, and it didn't start with Florida in 2000."
At 19th Street and Seventh Avenue, Judith Malina, who played Grandmama Addams in the "Addams Family" movie, waited to lead her Living Theater collective into the streets. A diminutive woman, she has hair dyed jet black and harbors the hope that, one day, she might lead a "pacifist-anarchist-vegetarian revolution."
"We can dream, can't we?" she said over her shoulder as she led her troupe into the streets.
Special correspondent Michelle Garcia contributed to this report.
--------
Poor, Homeless Rally Against Bush in New York
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-protests.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Several thousand protesters staged demonstrations and marches against the Bush administration's economic policies on Monday as the Republican Party opened a four-day convention to nominate the president for a second term in office.
An estimated 1,000 people rallied on behalf of the homeless opposite the United Nations headquarters, and several thousand others marched to within two blocks of the Madison Square Garden convention arena in a demonstration accusing Republicans of ignoring the poor and those living with HIV and AIDS.
The protests came as Republicans began their convention to nominate President Bush for a second four-year term. He faces Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts in the Nov. 2 presidential election.
At the rally near U.N. headquarters, protesters watched by at least 100 police officers in riot gear carried signs with slogans saying ``The Poor Will Be Heard'' and ``Housing is a Human Right.''
``All we have is our voice and a deep commitment to ending poverty in this country. We hope to build a multiracial movement for poor people in America to help raise the standard of living for all of us,'' said Cheri Honkala, a formerly homeless mother who belongs to the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
Despite not having a permit to march, Honkala led the rally out of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and into the street for 2 mile march to a protest area near Madison Square Garden, escorted by police on foot, bicycles, motorcycles and cars.
Honkala's group has been touring New Jersey and New York in recent weeks with a shanty town dubbed ``Bushville'' made of nylon tarps, wood and mattresses. The group dismantled the structure on Monday after completing their tour, which aimed to draw attention to America's poor, homeless and people without health care.
An estimated 850,000 people are homeless in the United States on any given night, according to advocates for the homeless.
About 45 million people were without health care insurance for part of 2003, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published last week.
The report showed that since Bush took office in 2001, 4.3 million people have fallen below the poverty line. That brought the number of people living in poverty in 2003 to 35.9 million, or 12.5 percent of the population.
Several thousand protesters representing groups called Still We Rise and Housing Works marched to within two blocks of Madison Square Garden accusing Republicans of ignoring the plight of the poor and those living with HIV and AIDS.
``Today's march is about the reality of the Republicans' compassion agenda,'' said Michael Kink of Housing Works.
``They talk the talk but they do not walk the walk on AIDS, homelessness and poverty. We have more AIDS, more homelessness and more extreme poverty than we did four years ago.''
One protester was arrested on Monday. Police have arrested 546 people in scattered protests in the city since last Thursday. An anti-war march past the convention arena on Sunday drew about 500,000 people, according to organizers' estimates.
--------
S.Africa Police Fire on Youth Protest, 20 Hurt
August 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-safrica-protest.html
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - South African police fired rubber pellets at township youths who blocked a highway and burned tires Monday in a rare protest over poverty and other grievances.
Police fired at 4,500 youths, mostly aged 12 to 18, who blocked traffic on the main N3 highway linking Durban and Johannesburg near the town of Harrismith, Superintendent Annalie Wrensch told Reuters by telephone.
She said 20 youths were treated for wounds from the pellets, which are fired from shot guns and used by South African police to quell riots.
``The police had to use force,'' Wrensch said. ``Eventually, there were 20 of them that went to hospital.''
Police arrested 38 youths who will appear in court Monday to face charges of public violence at a hearing hastily convened because the defendants were minors, she said.
Police forced the crowd off the highway, but youths then burned tires around the Intabazwe township before the situation calmed down.
The crowd, including children who skipped school, were protesting poverty, the state of roads and other public services, as well as grievances against the mayor and members of the local council, she added.
``Some of their concerns are legit (legitimate), but something like poverty the council can't solve,'' Wrensch said.
Ten years after the end of apartheid, many of South Africa's black majority still live in poor townships with little prospect of breaking out of a cycle of poverty.
Thousands of residents of a slum settlement near the main business center Johannesburg rioted for three days in July over reports that some of them were to be relocated, prompting clashes with police reminiscent of apartheid violence.
Politicians said at the time that some community leaders had spread false rumors of forced evictions.
----
Crackdown:
400 Arrests as NYPD Unveil New Policing Tactics & Surveillance Methods
Monday, August 30th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/1512202
Democracy Now!'s Jeremy Scahill reports on how police cracked down on protesters and made mass arrests at Critical Mass, near Madison Square Garden and in Times Square. [includes rush transcript]
- Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! producer and correspondent.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: The Democracy Now! team was on the streets of New York in different parts of the city yesterday to cover all of the different protests before and after the major march. Producer and correspondent Jeremy Scahill joins us in the studio now. We'll be speaking with one of the protesters who was arrested this week in a banner-hang and she faces many decades in jail. We begin, though, with Jeremy. Jeremy, welcome.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Good to be here, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well it was quite a day yesterday.
JEREMY SCAHILL: It's really remarkable what's going on. I think the real story of yesterday beyond the enormity of that march is the battle going on between the independent media movement in this country and activists and the police in terms of who is becoming more sophisticated in their tactics. What we're seeing is this unprecedented level of text messaging around the city. Various activists groups and the Independent Media Center are blasting out these text message updates to people's telephones telling them where the action is. If the police are beating people on a certain corner, within moments, hundreds, or thousands, of activists are getting the text messages on their phones. They're responding to it throughout the day. Going all the way to Central Park. But the police are using sophisticated tactics. There are at least 200 police officers roaming the city that have cameras mounted on helmets that are beaming back, wirelessly, video images to the central command area they have set up called the Multi-Agency Coordination Center. Some 66 federal, state, local agencies working in coordination with each other. On a tactical level, what we're seeing in the streets is the police - many of the police not identifying themselves in any way as police. In fact, Amy, you and I yesterday were at a protest of the mouse bloc where they were moving from theater to theater, in the theater district around Broadway, around 47th street. When the republican delegates would come out of their discounted theater shows, the mouse bloc would confront them and get into arguments with the Republican delegates as they were coming out. Well, as they ran around and made their way from theater to theater, a number of times, the police used tactics to cut them off, to split the march. One of the things they did, was to take orange fence-like -- a mesh -- orange mesh fence-like material and to literally surround the demonstrators with it. Anyone caught in the orange mesh netting was then arrested and was put onto city buses, New York City buses. One of the things that I thought was one of the most disturbing tactics is when we were moving up Broadway as the mouse bloc was moving to another Broadway show, the police came in on motorcycles, there was no identification that they were police whatsoever. They were actual motorcycles, they were wearing helmets that said Harley-Davidson. At first I thought it was a group of bikers who were coming to attack the protesters. And they drove the motorcycles into the middle of the crowds.
AMY GOODMAN: And as we followed the crowds, it was frightening. The motorcycles would race up, and Sharif Abdel-Kouddous, another producer, and I were walking, the police were moving in on the protesters and not giving them a chance or warning. There was a man in front of me wearing a bandana and jeans who was walking slowly, and I said to him, it seemed like a bystander, I said, please move ahead. We were just about to be -- the police were moving in very fast. He slowed down. I realized later, he was an undercover cop, which meant he was penning us in with the protesters. And as we quickly made our way down the street trying to observe everything, as the police tackled these protesters, who were saying "I'm trying to get away," we heard one of the officials in charge, say to the other police around him, "If they stop, if they ask a question, cuff them." Cuffing them is not just cuffing them. It's slamming them to the ground as they say, "What have I done? What have I done?"
JUAN GONZALEZ: You also had, I noticed in the theater district as well, an enormous number of private security, by the Republican National Committee itself working in tandem with the police, and in front of every hotel, you have a large number of private security that are all communicating with walkie-talkies as well as with the police. I mean, the display, I think outside of Phantom of the Opera alone there must have been 50 policemen lining the streets as the republicans were going into the opening of the play.
AMY GOODMAN: We also bumped into a legal observer. They're wearing the bright green hats. She took her hat off and I said, "What are you doing? You're the one who's watching." We were watching as people were being handcuffed, all of their belongings were put in plastic garbage bags that are hung over their handcuffed hands at the back. And I said, "Why are you taking your hat off." She said, "I think we're being targeted." We were watching as legal observers themselves were being arrested. She said, "I think it's easier to operate not saying that we are legal observers."
JEREMY SCAHILL: I think it's important to encourage people to check out the work of the Independent Media Center. There is a remarkable story under way here. That is the way that independent media is covering this. We had 15,000 journalists in Boston allegedly covering the convention. What the young people from the Independent Media Center have managed to do in the last 48 hours is to provide more coverage of what's happening in New York at this convention and it hasn't started yet, than 15,000 journalists did combined in Boston. It's remarkable and the quality of work. We all were in Seattle in 1999, when the Independent Media Center really burst onto the scene. The quality of work has improved so much since 1999. So many of these young people are becoming serious, responsible journalists who are doing work that is important and credible.
AMY GOODMAN: Which precisely, is why, Jeremy, why I think we are seeing them under attack right now, the Justice Department just having opened a criminal investigation into the New York Indy Media Center. The Justice Department is demanding that the IndyMedia's internet service provider hand over records regarding posts on the site that listed the names of republican delegates. The American Civil Liberties Union is defending IndyMedia and the internet provider saying that we cannot see legitimate purpose behind the investigation. It looks like another attempt to repress political dissent. These are very serious issues. Also many IndyMedia folks covering the Critical Mass Bike Ride on Friday night, our own reporter, Elizabeth Press, got caught up in a dragnet. I was watching the bikers as they were going through Times Square, a huge celebration, 5,000 cyclists. There were people all over Times Square. The bystanders, everyone was smiling. Very liberating moment as people were singing and they were chanting, as they raced through Times Square right around Macy's. Right around 35th street, Elizabeth got caught with other of the cyclists. She had a camera on her bike, and there's no way to cover it, other than on roller-skate, John Hamilton did, our other producer, who was rollerblading down the street. Elizabeth got caught. She was handcuffed. She was going down as we listened to the police talking about the protesters as "our guests." This is how the guests in New York are treated. It was interesting to see just as they were about to corral her into another bus, above as The Daily Show ad in Times Square that got that sign, "Welcome to New York. That Smell? Freedom." And -- but fortunately, with the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union prevailing upon finally on officer who would listen, we were able to have Elizabeth released and unhandcuffed, her bike taken out of the mass that was being taken away. Meanwhile, the young woman next to her, her bike and her bag, she was taken away from it, blocks away she was begging for them to get it. She was saying this was unfair. The police officer saying to her, Elizabeth Press overheard, "You're used to wearing handcuffs; they must just be pink and furry at night." She was yelling sexual harassment.
JEREMY SCAHILL: I wanted to turn the tables on Juan a second. I wanted to ask you a question, Juan. You are covering these protests and also you were a student leader, a leader of the Young Lords in 1968. I wanted to ask you this question that is being talked about a lot in the protest circles. That is the question of provocateurs. And the police having provocateurs or others working as de facto provocateurs.
JUAN GONZALEZ: There's no doubt in my mind it's operating here. We saw it operating in Philadelphia at the Republican Convention there, where there were undercover cops that were in with some of the groups actually fomenting some of the activities that the people were arrested for. We saw the report that just a couple of days ago about two young men, 19, I think, 20 years old, who were arrested on plotting to set some bombs in Herald Square when it was an undercover agent who was actually involved with them. I -- that smelled to me right away of an agent provocateur situation.
AMY GOODMAN: And right before that in Albany, two leaders of the mosque in Albany, New York, are arrested and then it turns out that there is an undercover agent who was trying to get them to engage in a violent act against the Pakistani Consulate, and they say this is not -- they don't want to engage in violent Jihad. Finally, a judge got so frustrated. Ashcroft held a news conference, the Attorney General, and now they have been released.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I think it's anyone who has looked at these kinds of activities historically knows that the undercover agents are often the most militant, urging the most extreme actions and then as an opportunity to draw people in and to arrest them, so that I think that many of the protesters have to be careful of that, and watch out for that.
JEREMY SCAHILL: In Miami, what appeared to be one protester using an electric shock tazer against another protester. Of course, the person was an undercover cop who then crossed back over the lines and was driven away to safety after shocking another protester.
AMY GOODMAN: After we were in Times Square last night and we were watching the police take down some of the protesters who were going from theater to theater, just in the sidewalks, just speaking out and protesting against war, we bumped into one of the revelers. He was a North Carolina state senator, and he just had come from Bombay Dreams.
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: My concern is that this town is under a siege. It's under attack. There are people who have threatened the entire security and safety of the entire region. And these -- right now, what has happened is there's a major impediment for the officers trying to protect your life. Unless we allow them the ability and the freedom to do that, you know, we're making a mistake for our own safety. I believe in free speech. I have exerted free speech myself. But at the same time, there's a time and a place for free speech.
AMY GOODMAN: What did they do?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I'm not sure what they did. I wasn't here during the time that they were arrested. But I know these men are concerned about your life.
AMY GOODMAN: What is that time and place for free speech.
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: The time and place would be certainly not in this town that's under threat.
AMY GOODMAN: in what way?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: When this city --
AMY GOODMAN: In what way is it under threat?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I think it's threatened strongly. The reality of the convention here and president's coming, this a major national issue. If you aren't sensitive to that as a national problem, I think we have major problem of communication here.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the protests today of about a half million people who marched down the street. What message did that send?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I believe in dissent, God Bless that they lived in America. If they lived in country where the people are trying to kill us, they wouldn't have the freedom, would they?
AMY GOODMAN: Specifically what they were saying of aside from of the issue of free speech. What was your response?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I didn't hear their message.
AMY GOODMAN: They were protesting against the war and against the U.S.A. Patriot Act. I
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I think it's --
INTERVIEW: Against the loss of jobs --
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I'm working for the loss of jobs.
INTERVIEW: Okay.
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: I'm working real hard back in my state. But we have a major concern in this town today, and right now, you're presuming a major -- you're presenting a major obstacle for these gentlemen, these officers trying to protect your life.
INTERVIEW: What's your name, sir?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: Robert Pittenger.
INTERVIEW: You're a state senator from North Carolina?
SEN. ROBERT PITTENGER: These officers trying to protect your life. We are people creating a major distraction so they cannot focus of the concerns of trying to protect you and me. And unfortunately, if we have a disaster that will prove me right. I hope that doesn't happen.
AMY GOODMAN: North Carolina state senator, Robert Pittenger, speaking outside Bombay Dreams that he had just gone to with other North Carolina delegates, talking about the protests. You could tell the delegates because they were often wearing a red bag that said nytimes.com, New York Times supporting the Broadway shows that delegates went to. That's a story itself which we have talked about before, you can go to our website and check it out. The delegates were not pleased that one of the discounts offered was to Naked Boys Singing. That is a play with an openly gay theme, celebrates sexuality, and though delegates took advantage of the discount for that, the Republican Party said they didn't want the tickets offered anymore, so only those who had gotten them in time were able to see the play. There were other interesting issues about what plays they're allowed to see and what plays they are not. If you want to get information, news headlines and other ongoing accounts of what's going on in the city, in addition to democracynow.org, check out the IndyMedia website. It's nyc.indymedia.org. Right near us on White Street is Gas which shows independent -- on Franklin -- independent journalists, independent journalists, their photographs, their films, their creations of work. It's a real gallery of that work. It's here in New York City. Just below Lafayette Street and right next to Lafayette just below Canal. Jeremy, thanks very much.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Thank you.
----
Activists Face 25 Years for Hanging Anti-Bush Banner At Plaza Hotel
Monday, August 30th, 2004
Demoracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/1512212
The New York police have charged four activists with two felonies for hanging a banner last week because a police officer was injured while reporting to the scene. Their attorney has accused the police of trumping up the charge in order to scare off future demonstrators. [includes rush transcript] On Thursday, in one of the first protests against the Republican National Convention, four activists dropped a huge anti-Bush banner from the Plaza Hotel.
The banner featured two arrows facing opposite ways. The arrow pointing forward read Truth. The arrow pointing backward read Bush.
The banner drop went off without a hitch.
The four activists were arrested. They expected to face minor charges.
But the four now face two Class D felony counts and up to 25 years in jail. The police charged them with assault because a police officer stepped in a skylight and cut his leg while responding to the crime.
The New York Times reports that in March the Police Department instructed officers under certain circumstances to consider charging protesters during the convention with second-degree assault if any are injured while trying to make arrests.
Their attorney Gerald Lefcourt said he had been defending protesters since the Vietnam era and had never seen an assault charge applied in a similar situation.
He told the New York Times "It is really a bogus charge, probably to try to scare off future demonstrators.... Assault requires an intent to cause injury and taking steps to cause that injury"
We are joined now in our studio with Terra Lawson-Rember, one of the four activists involved in the banner drop action. RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
JUAN GONZALEZ: We're now joined in our studio by Tara Lawson Reamer, one of the four activists involved in the banner-drop action. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us exactly how it happened. We know that the mayor concerned that by demonizing protesters that people would be afraid to come to New York, so he then started offering protesters a discount in hotel rooms as well. Did you get a discounted hotel rooms at the plaza?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: No. I wish. Actually, I'm a native here. So --
AMY GOODMAN: You got a room at the Plaza, though?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: Yes, we did. We were really thinking about the fact that the republicans were coming to New York, a attempting to use our city to -- I mean, as the New York Times sometimes said this morning, "Beginning a week in which the party seeks to pivot to the center and seize on street demonstrations to portray Democrats as extremists as they repeatedly remind the nation of the September 11 attacks." We thought that strategy was completely unacceptable because we know that the Republican Agenda did not represent the American agenda, so we looked at the plaza as a -- as an icon of New York that weigh could reclaim for our -- to really get a message across that was much more on point with what we think America is all about.
JUAN GONZALEZ: How exactly did you lower the banner?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: Well, we -- as Amy mentioned, we had a room and we went up to the roof. The door was open and set up an anchor system up there. Extremely safe anchor system. We were all very -- had done a lot of rock climbing and that kind of a thing. We know a lot about anchors. Two of our team stayed on the roof to make sure that everything stayed safe and to speak with the police if and when they arrive two of us rappelled down the front of the building. I was on stage left and another climber, David, was on stage right. We went down to the front of the building and set up the safety systems along the way. And then deployed the banner once we measured beforehand and purposely knew exactly the dimensions and when we got to the calculated point, we displayed the banner.
AMY GOODMAN: You unfurled it?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to the cop?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: The police officer -- I was not there, because i was hanging from the rope, unfurling the banner at the time. One member of our group her name's, Becky Johnson, was actually sitting above my anchor system making sure that I was safe, and when the officer came onto the roof, he -- she specifically asked him she said, you know, you really should call the team of officers that's trained to deal with this the emergency medical services, because you're not really trained to be here. It's not really safe for you to be in this place. He didn't listen to her. And he proceeded to walk around the roof, and stepped -- stepped in a skylight. That's essentially what happened after we had been there.
JUAN GONZALEZ: He fell through the skylight?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: He did not fall through. His leg went through.
AMY GOODMAN: He requires dozens of stitches.
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: He required stitches. I want to say on behalf of all of us who were involved in delay deploying the banner that we really are sorry and that the -- the police officer injured himself, and we wish him the best, but clearly, that is not -- we weren't the perpetrators of that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, now, you face -- you have been charged with a felony?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: Yes, we have actually been charged with two felonies? It
AMY GOODMAN: They are--
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: The assault and reckless endangerment and both are obviously totally politically calculated, bogus charges.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the banner-hang was worth it?
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: : It was incredible. There's no question in my mind that it was absolutely necessary for to us try to speak to middle America, to people who are not in New York to say, no, the demonstrators are not some extremist group as the republicans are going to try to portray us. We represent mainstream American values. I think there's doubt out there in the minds of voters. The purpose of this is to crystallize this to say that we all know that Bush and the Bush and Cheney administration have been lying to Americans, and that's just not acceptable in the presidency.
JUAN GONZALEZ: There's no doubt as a weekend image, the words and the arrows went across the world, and they reached quite a few people who were not in New York city.
AMY GOODMAN: Truth with an arrow in one direction, bush with an arrow in the other. Terra Lawson-Rember, thank you for joining us.
TERRA LAWSON-REMBER: : Thank you.
----
Critical Mass: Over 260 Arrested in First Major Protest of RNC
Monday, August 30th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/1453256
Some 5,000 cyclists gathered in Union Square Park for "Critical Mass," a monthly bike ride around Manhattan, sponsored by environmental group "Times Up!" New York police arrested 264 people - many of them were held for 24 hours. [includes rush transcript] More than half a million people took to the streets yesterday to protest the Republican agenda in New York. The march was largely peaceful, but the day was hardly without incident. After the six-hour long march, protesters did not just pack up their signs and go home. Various groups spread out across the city holding demonstrations and actions into the late hours of the night and many of them were met with violence at the hands of the NYPD.
In the Theatre District, a massive police presence greeted protesters who had launched a peaceful yet relentless verbal assault campaign on Republican delegates attending Broadway theaters as guests of The New York Times.
Police conducted indiscriminate arrests without warning, catching protestors, bystanders, legal observers and some members of the press using plastic fencing and netting material to fence them in.
Plainclothes officers riding unidentified mopeds, were deployed on the streets of Times Square where they rushed dangerously onto pedestrian sidewalks to block protesters" movements, and pen them in for arrest. Protesters chanting at delegates coming out of theaters were forced away by police who often followed them for several blocks. National guild lawyers said police ordered protesters to disperse, then arrested them before they were able to leave. While bearing down on one group, a senior police official ordered told officers "If they stop. If they ask a question. They get cuffed."
During the parade earlier in the day, 15 people were arrested, including nine charged with felony assault on police officers. The arrests occurred after a paper-mache and wood dragon was set on fire outside Madison Square Garden. In a separate incident, one police officer sustained third-degree burns.
Some 200 arrests were made yesterday, most of them for disorderly conduct. Over 400 have been arrested since Friday when protests surrounding the Republican convention began.
The first major demonstration came on Friday night when some 5,000 cyclists gathered in Union Square Park for "Critical Mass," a monthly bike ride around Manhattan, sponsored by environmental group "Times Up!"
New York police made over 264 arrests that night in several locations along the bike route. Cyclists said the bike ride was peaceful and the police acted unreasonably. Most of those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and held for 24-hours at Pier 57, a three-story, block-long pier that has been converted to a holding pen for those protesting the convention.
Sights and sounds of the Critical Mass ride.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: The first major demonstration came on Friday night when some 5,000 cyclists gathered in Union Square Park for Critical Mass, a monthly bike ride around Manhattan, sponsored by the environmental group, Time's Up. New York police made over 264 arrests that night, in several locations along the bike route. Cyclists said the bike ride was peaceful and the police acted unreasonably. Most of those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct, and held for 24 hours at Pier 57, a three-story block-long pier that's been converted to a holding pen for those protesting the convention. Democracy Now! producer, Elizabeth Press, got on her bike with a camera mounted on the handlebars. So she could record the Critical Mass bike ride as it went through the streets of New York with 5,000 cyclists. This is her piece from the Critical Mass ride.
BEKA ECONOMOPOLIS: My name is Beka Economopolis. I'm here at the Critical Mass ride, with thousands of other people on bikes and skates. And this is something that we do as a tradition on the last Friday of every month. We meet at 7:00 at Union Square. And we take to the streets and we ride. And we don't have a permit. It's more about taking back public space. And having a good time doing it.
BILL DiPAULO: My name is Bill DiPaulo, I work with Time's Up, an environmental group. We're using our bikes in nonpolluting transportation. And we want everybody to be aware that this is a positive thing happening, and not to be looked at as a demonstration but a positive celebration.
UNIDENTIFIED: We've been in communication with the NYPD today, as have the organizers of tonight's Critical Mass ride. What happens remains to be seen, I'm not quite sure. But we're definitely prepared to document and monitor the police's reaction.
SARAH TURNER: Hi, my name is Sarah Turner. I was on the corner of Second Avenue and 10th Street where the Critical Mass had just completed. The police came with a line of motorcycles. And they started pushing the bikes. And the bikers started pushing back. There was a man who was trapped under his bike. And the police all grabbed him at once. One police officer violently pushed his face into the ground and put his knee on the person's neck. The other police officers quickly were shouting to get back, as everybody was chanting, "Let him go, let him go." The police started taking out their batons and swinging them at the protesters. The protesters were chanting, "The whole world is watching." one police officer took out his pepper spray and said, "Get back, or you're all going to get sprayed."
ELIZABETH PRESS: My name is Elizabeth Press. I'm a producer at Democracy Now! I was just arrested at 36th and 7th Ave. while documenting the Critical Mass bike ride. I pulled up to a red light. In front of me, the cops were arresting a mass group of bike riders. I pulled over to the side and put my camera on the arrests. And then the officer came up to me and said I was violating the law. After being detained I was then released at 34th and 7th Avenue.
LEIF: My name is Leif. I'm 19 years old. I was arrested for riding my bicycle. They put me in a bus, brought me to this place, it was like a pier, I don't know where it was. I think it was on the west side. The conditions were terrible. It was like these big, tall fence cages with barbed wire at the top. The floors were covered in this motor oil, type deal that gave me like a rash on my arm. It was terrible. And from there, we went to just cell to cell to cell. Basically I just got out just now.
UNIDENTIFIED: It feels like a really good plan. To break us mentally and physically. A preplanned system where people would be put in these very, very dirty facility and come out of the system, mentally broken, and physically dirty. And then, even the police people in the downtown station were constantly asking us, why are you so dirty and crusty punks? They were laughing at us. And they did -- I don't think they ever been there, they hadn't realize that they did it. That their system is doing it. And I think it was done intentionally to a crusty punk any possible legitimized person that is arrested. So that when they come out, any picture taken of them is just like this dirty anarchist madness.
AMY GOODMAN: That report prepared by Democracy Now! producer Elizabeth Press with the reports of many other independent videographers and reporters around the city who have converged here to cover the Republican National Convention.
----
Veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas on Iraq:
"We've really Damaged Our Psyche, Our Soul, Our Image"
Monday, August 30th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/1454209
Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas joins us in our firehouse studio to talk about the convention, the media and the war in Iraq. Thomas has served as White House correspondent for some 57 years and has covered every President since Kennedy. [includes rush transcript]
We are now joined by veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Commonly referred to as "The First Lady of the Press," Helen Thomas is the most senior member of the White House press corps. She has served as White House correspondent for United Press International for some 57 years and has covered every President since Kennedy.
President Gerald Ford once remarked, "If God created the Earth in six days, he couldn't have rested on the seventh - he would have had to explain it Helen Thomas."
- Helen Thomas, veteran White House correspondent.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We're now joined by veteran White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, commonly referred to as the First Lady of the Press. Helen Thomas is the most senior member of the White House Press Corps. She served as White House correspondent for United Press International for some 57 years and has covered every president since Kennedy. President Gerald Ford once remarked, "If God created the earth in six days, he couldn't have rested on the seventh. He would have had to explain it to Helen Thomas." Helen Thomas went from U.P.I. to working for the Hearst newspapers, and we welcome you, Helen Thomas, to Democracy Now!
HELEN THOMAS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It's great to have you with us, we've spoken to you on the phone. You're here for the Republican National Convention. We bumped into you at the Time-Warner party. And your thoughts were not really right there in that corporate celebration. You were talking about Fallujah.
HELEN THOMAS: Yes. And in fact, on Saturday itself, 14 people were killed, in one story that I saw, and eight of them were children. I mean, why isn't every American upset? Our conscience.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the - as you've seen these conventions develop over the years, your thoughts on how they have evolved, especially the enormous impact now obviously that television has in either covering or not covering the events at the conventions.
HELEN THOMAS: Well, I think they're so cut-and-dried now since we do have the slate. And they're basically a celebration, and everybody has been homogenized to a point where their unity, harmony is supposed to be the name of the game. And I must say that I don't think that that's America. We usually have a difference of opinion, and it's allowed to be spoken. I like the conventions that were contested, where you had real opinions cited. Except everybody has been dumbed down.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of the George W. Bush presidency? You've covered nine presidents moving on to, well, we'll see what happens in November.
HELEN THOMAS: Well, it's the most muscular foreign policy that we've ever had. I think that America doesn't invade countries without provocation, and that's what we've done. And I think that it has tainted us throughout the world. We've really damaged our psyche, our soul, our image. The very fact that Secretary of State Colin Powell couldn't go to Athens, because, I mean, which is the heart of democracy, because of our war policy. I never think of my country as being pro-war. I think it's a last thing that would happen to us. Of course, if you're attacked, it's different. But for us to invade a country? It's shocking to me.
JUAN GONZALEZ: How do you see then, given that reality, why is there still among the public, a considerable support for the war? Clearly it's been turning, but why so many Americans are still supportive of the president's policies?
HELEN THOMAS: He plays the fear card. From 9/11 on, everybody felt they had to be a patriotic American. And then it segwayed into a war where they continued that. And I think reporters contributed a lot by not rocking the boat. And afraid of being also tainted as called un-American. But I really think that we fell down on the job, from that aspect. In terms of the Americans, I think that the very fact that the president keeps saying that he had a right to go in and so forth, they want to believe him. But pure logic shows us that everything he said about going into war, the reasons, have proved to be untrue. And I don't know how that can be acceptable to any human being.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about the role that the press has played? We're seeing some mea culpas, or maybe kinda culpas. You have that New York Times A-10 box that says, letter from the editor.
HELEN THOMAS: But actually New York Times was a lot more reluctant to support the war than The Washington Post. Day after day for two years, they drummed up the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Now you're with your colleagues every day. What do they say to you about this? What do The Washington Post, The New York Times reporters say to you?
HELEN THOMAS: Well, after New York Times did the mea culpa with a couple of editorials, I went up to The Post reporter and said, when are you guys going to cave? And he looked at me as though I had dropped from Mars. Anyway, I guess each has to make their own decision. But The Post never came around. In 3,000 words they basically said, maybe we should have put the story on page 1, instead of page A-20, which showed that there was some doubt about what the President was saying, but, I mean, that's not a full-fledged apology. And I think the apologies are forthcoming. They should be. But more than that, you can't restore the lives. Thousands of people are dead.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, you've also, you've talked about the muscular foreign policy. What about the Bush administration's relations with and discussions with the press? Clearly, you have not been a favorite of the White House.
HELEN THOMAS: No, I'm on the black list. But that's ok. Just so the questions are asked. But the president has not held a full-fledged news conference since April. And if he's re-elected, I think there will be even fewer and far between. These people are so strange. They think they have the authority. I mean we are, we should be the power. We have the authority. And he thinks he's president, and therefore, he doesn't have to answer questions from the lowly press. And I think that even Kerry has some sort of strange idea about presidential authority. I mean, it's --presidents have to be questioned early and often. And this is the only accountability that we have for them. It's the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned is a press conference.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
HELEN THOMAS: Congress can subpoena a president, but they're not going to do that unless it's very dire.
AMY GOODMAN: You said even Kerry. What do you mean?
HELEN THOMAS: Well, when he's -- was supporting, he would still support the war, despite the fact that none of the facts stack up. And then he said the president should have the authority. Authority, you know, I mean, it was shocking. I think that's very misplaced; dictators have authority.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But what about the current crop or generation of journalists who take this, who allow it to happen day in and day out and really don't raise much of a furor about it?
HELEN THOMAS: Well, I think that the hold, as I say, the onus of being a patriot and being on television and also the fear of jeopardizing the truth, worrying that you're not supporting the troops if you ask questions that seem to be penetrating or challenging.
AMY GOODMAN: You're unusual in the news corps over the last more than 50 years, close to 60 years. A woman --
HELEN THOMAS: I'm expressing my opinion now, which I didn't do for 57 years.
AMY GOODMAN: You're a woman --
HELEN THOMAS: I said I'm expressing my opinion now.
AMY GOODMAN: You're a woman, and you're Arab American. How --
HELEN THOMAS: I'm American. I don't like hyphens. It's true my parents came from Syria. But what does that go to do with? Everybody's parents came from somewhere else.
AMY GOODMAN: Does it have an influence for you, do you feel, that gives you a unique perspective?
HELEN THOMAS: Of course, I have a cultural background of knowing that, but I don't think that -- anybody who knows me, throughout the Vietnam War, I was equally adamant against the war of our choice. I felt as equally passionate in the sense that I don't think you should go into anyone's country without any reason that you can justify or explain.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to touch base with you throughout the week. Helen Thomas has been our guest. We'll also link to our previous interview with Helen Thomas, who has written the book Front Row at the White House: Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President. And we'll link to some of her questioning of the White House press secretary. Thank you very much, Helen Thomas.
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GOP Convention Protests Mostly Peaceful
By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press
Monday, August 30, 2004; 10:11 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46222-2004Aug30.html
NEW YORK - Tens of thousands of protesters made a sweaty but jubilant five-hour march through the streets of Manhattan on the eve of the Republican National Convention for a demonstration that wound up being largely peaceful despite fears of violent skirmishes with police.
Police gave no official crowd estimate Sunday, though one law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the crowd at 125,000; organizers claimed it was more than 500,000. By either count, experts said the crowd easily outnumbered any convention demonstration in U.S. history.
They carried fake flag-draped coffins and fly swatters with President Bush's image. They chanted slogans like "Four more months" and "No more years." They accused the White House of waging an unjust war in Iraq, carrying signs proclaiming "Support our troops - send them home."
Altogether more than 200 people were arrested, many of them outside the march area in Times Square. Earlier in the day, police detained about 50 protesters on bicycles who stopped near the parade route and were carted away in an off-duty city bus. Some of the worst unrest during the march occurred when someone set a float on fire, but the blaze was almost immediately extinguished.
In Times Square, demonstrators heckled Republican delegates on their way to Broadway plays. At the Majestic Theater on 44th Street, protesters chanted at delegates waiting to see "The Phantom of the Opera," and the delegates simply replied with their own chant - "Four more years!"
The demonstrators in the march carried signs and chanted slogans supporting a host of political positions, virtually all of them in opposition to Bush.
"I can't think of the last time I hated a president so much," said marcher Mindy Rhindruss, a researcher from Queens. "He wants to destroy everything that's American - my right to my vote, my voice."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, left-wing film producer Michael Moore and other liberal notables joined the demonstrators, stopping to deliver speeches along the way.
"Help is on the way. Hope is in the air," Jackson declared.
Experts said the crowd was by far the biggest for a political convention, including the notorious 1968 Democratic gathering in Chicago.
"From what I can tell so far this was much larger and much less violent," said Sidney Tarrow, a professor of government and sociology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
The horseshoe-shaped parade route began in lower Manhattan and made its way past Madison Square Garden, where Bush will receive the Republican nomination on Thursday.
Protest organizers had originally hoped to end their march with a rally on Central Park's Great Lawn, but city officials nixed the plan - citing possible damage to the swath of Kentucky bluegrass - and a judge backed them up.
So the march ended at Union Square instead. A few thousand protesters continued to Central Park for more chanting, sign-waving and drumming, but neither they nor the police seemed to think much of it.
"It's just a bunch of people enjoying the park," said Ed Delatorre, a deputy police chief.
The day attracted political activists from across the ideological spectrum. On the Great Lawn, members of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade mingled with mainstream Democrats, while Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik gave an impromptu news conference.
"It was fabulous, a fabulous day," said Leslie Cagan, the leader of United for Peace and Justice, which organized the protest.
Associated Press reporters Sam Dolnick, Madison J. Gray, Tom Hays, Sara Kugler, Richard Pyle and Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.
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Poor, Homeless Rally Against Bush in New York
Reuters
Monday, August 30, 2004; 7:53 PM
By Larry Fine
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47248-2004Aug30.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Several thousand protesters staged demonstrations and marches against the Bush administration's economic policies on Monday as the Republican Party opened a four-day convention to nominate the president for a second term in office.
An estimated 1,000 people rallied on behalf of the homeless opposite the United Nations headquarters, and several thousand others marched to within two blocks of the Madison Square Garden convention arena in a demonstration accusing Republicans of ignoring the poor and those living with HIV and AIDS.
The protests came as Republicans began their convention to nominate President Bush for a second four-year term. He faces Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts in the Nov. 2 presidential election.
At the rally near U.N. headquarters, protesters watched by at least 100 police officers in riot gear carried signs with slogans saying "The Poor Will Be Heard" and "Housing is a Human Right."
"All we have is our voice and a deep commitment to ending poverty in this country. We hope to build a multiracial movement for poor people in America to help raise the standard of living for all of us," said Cheri Honkala, a formerly homeless mother who belongs to the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
Despite not having a permit to march, Honkala led the rally out of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and into the street for 2 mile march to a protest area near Madison Square Garden, escorted by police on foot, bicycles, motorcycles and cars.
Honkala's group has been touring New Jersey and New York in recent weeks with a shanty town dubbed "Bushville" made of nylon tarps, wood and mattresses. The group dismantled the structure on Monday after completing their tour, which aimed to draw attention to America's poor, homeless and people without health care.
An estimated 850,000 people are homeless in the United States on any given night, according to advocates for the homeless.
About 45 million people were without health care insurance for part of 2003, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published last week.
The report showed that since Bush took office in 2001, 4.3 million people have fallen below the poverty line. That brought the number of people living in poverty in 2003 to 35.9 million, or 12.5 percent of the population.
Several thousand protesters representing groups called Still We Rise and Housing Works marched to within two blocks of Madison Square Garden accusing Republicans of ignoring the plight of the poor and those living with HIV and AIDS.
"Today's march is about the reality of the Republicans' compassion agenda," said Michael Kink of Housing Works.
"They talk the talk but they do not walk the walk on AIDS, homelessness and poverty. We have more AIDS, more homelessness and more extreme poverty than we did four years ago."
One protester was arrested on Monday. Police have arrested 546 people in scattered protests in the city since last Thursday. An anti-war march past the convention arena on Sunday drew about 500,000 people, according to organizers' estimates.
(Additional reporting by Mark McSherry)
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Vast Anti-Bush Rally Greets Republicans in New York
August 30, 2004
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30protest.html?pagewanted=all&position=
roaring two-mile river of demonstrators surged through the canyons of Manhattan yesterday in the city's largest political protest in decades, a raucous but peaceful spectacle that pilloried George W. Bush and demanded regime change in Washington.
On a sweltering August Sunday, the huge throng of protesters marched past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican National Convention opening today, and denounced President Bush as a misfit who had plunged America into war and runaway debt, undermined civil and constitutional rights, lied to the people, despoiled the environment and used the presidency to benefit corporations and millionaires.
The protest organizer, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000, rivaling a 1982 antinuclear rally in Central Park, and double the number it had predicted. It was, at best, a rough estimate. The Police Department, as is customary, offered no official estimate, but one officer in touch with the police command center at Madison Square Garden agreed that the crowd appeared to be close to a half-million.
The march, which took nearly six hours to complete, was a tense, shrill, largely choreographed trek from Chelsea to Midtown and back to Union Square, where it ended, as planned, without a rally. And while there were a couple of hundred arrests, the event went off without major violence, despite fears of explosive clashes with the biggest security force ever assembled in New York.
After the march, hundreds of protesters in a more belligerent mood made their way to Times Square and blocked the entrances of two Midtown hotels, while another group harassed Republican guests at a party at the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park. But a post-march gathering on the Great Lawn of the park was peaceful.
At a news conference last night, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said there had been about 200 arrests, mostly for disorderly conduct, though nine people were charged with felony assaults on officers who were seizing a 10th suspect for setting a small fire outside the Garden, and 15 members of an anarchist group called Black Block were arrested after they knocked down police barriers and hurled bottles at police lines at 34th Street and Avenue of the Americas.
It was unclear how many protesters were injured. Mr. Kelly said three officers suffered minor injuries in the Black Block arrests, and a deputy inspector suffered a hyperextended elbow in another incident. Another officer sustained a wrenched shoulder as he went to the aid of a colleague outside the Marriott Marquis Hotel, and another suffered a knee injury chasing a disorderly protester at Union Square.
"Organizers for United for Peace and Justice should be commended for keeping their word," Mr. Kelly said. "They pledged that their demonstrators would follow the march route and that's exactly what happened. It proceeded as expected and by and large was peaceful and orderly." He also praised officers for "commendable restraint," adding that "they are consummate professionals and it showed today."
The relatively peaceful outcome of the enormous march seemed the result of various factors - a determined restraint by the marchers and the police, weeks of planning by organizers and city officials, and, perhaps not least, the subduing effects of an exhaustingly hot day, with 90-degree temperatures and humidity that soaked shirts and wilted all but the most aggressive spirits.
As the march unfolded, the 5,000 Republican convention delegates, their families and entourages began sampling the delights of New York, attending parties and Broadway matinees, dining in homes and elegant restaurants and taking in the Gotham sights. Vice President Dick Cheney, Gov. George E. Pataki and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani gave speeches on Ellis Island, but took no note of the march. President Bush campaigned in Ohio, working toward an arrival in New York on Thursday.
The Republicans, some of whom regard protesters as little more than wild-eyed liberal wastrels, largely ignored yesterday's demonstration, but there were occasional encounters between delegates and demonstrators, like one outside a theater on 44th Street.
"Four more years," the delegates chanted.
"Four more months," the protesters responded.
Several hours after the march stepped off at noon, chaos erupted outside the Garden at Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street when a papier mâché dragon float was set on fire, scattering demonstrators. But the police quickly extinguished the flames before firefighters arrived and seized 15 people said to be carrying smoke bombs, and the march resumed as order was restored.
More than 50 bicyclists who were not participants in the march were seized for obstructing traffic at several locations in Midtown. Bystanders said that officers on motor scooters had rammed some bikes, knocking riders to the ground before handcuffing them. But the police took photographs and insisted that the officers had acted properly.
More than 50 people were also arrested for blocking the entrances to the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, where delegates from Ohio and California were staying, and the Milford Plaza Hotel on Eighth Avenue.
Most of those arrested were taken in buses to a detention center at Pier 57, at West 14th Street, an aging, dingy three-story warehouse of the Department of Marine and Aviation. Mateo Taussig, speaking for the National Lawyers Guild, said many had been denied access to lawyers, and he called the building an inappropriate detention facility.
After the march, thousands of protesters, apparently following suggestions by the demonstration's leaders, regrouped in Central Park, where organizers had been denied permission to rally in order to forestall damage to the Great Lawn - an affront to many who insisted it was free speech and not the grass being trampled. Trouble had been widely expected.
But the protesters gathered on the Great Lawn in what appeared to be a mellow mood, mostly young people scattered in small groups, Some held up peace signs or anti-Bush placards, others twirled sign poles like batons. Some practiced yoga, others smoked cigarettes and talked quietly. A few drums could be heard in the distance, but there were no bull horns or sound amplification equipment.
Police officers were also scattered around the Great Lawn, talking in small groups. Norman Siegel, a former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union who was acting as a legal observer, said the police told him they would not enforce a rule that gatherings of more than 20 required a permit. The police and the protesters appeared to be just hanging out, looking to avoid trouble.
"I see a very mellow scene," said Leslie Cagan, a leader of United for Peace and Justice, who had urged protesters to go to the park after the march. "The police are being very laid back and very mellow and that's great."
Underlying yesterday's events was wide concern over a possible terrorist attack - premonitions of a catastrophe aimed at disrupting the Republican convention, the national elections and the American psyche three years after Sept. 11. Such fears were expected to be the subtext of events throughout the convention, which runs through Thursday.
In response, the city and federal governments have mounted a $65 million security operation, with warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone over Manhattan, an armada of Coast Guard cutters and police launches patrolling waterways and tens of thousands of police officers and military personnel guarding landmarks, the convention site and other potential targets, as well as overseeing the week's almost nonstop protests.
But there was no sign that a terrorist attack was imminent, and the focus of the day was on the protest march as a tide of chanting, placard-waving, lustily shouting demonstrators from across the region and around the nation converged on New York's sun-drenched streets in a boisterous, almost carnival mood that belied the serious intent of the demonstration.
The multitudes were packed as dense as broccoli florets, and they filled the entire two-mile route - so the head of the march reached Union Square even before the last of the marchers stepped off at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue.
After months of mounting anger at the president and frustrations over plans for a rally that finally was scrapped after a court upheld city objections to the use of Central Park for fear of damage to the Great Lawn, the day was an emotional crescendo for the participants, for organizers and for city officials.
For Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials, who had spent days calling for a peaceful demonstration, the nonviolent outcome was gratifying, a testament to months of planning and training and an insistence on common-sense restraint by officers and marchers alike, and on carefully drawn rules to avoid needless confrontations.
For organizers who had also urged nonviolence, the outcome was gratifying and something of a relief. The leadership had voiced concern that any violence would play into the hands of Republicans, allowing them to caricature the protesters as anarchists, provocateurs and chronic malcontents.
The organizers said they were also pleased by the size and diversity of the turnout. The faces appeared to be a cross-section of the American experience. There were individuals, families and groups from many states and across the region and the city. There were young people and older citizens, families with small children, students and representatives of the middle and working classes and many organizations, including advocates of gay and women's rights, antiwar groups, immigrants, veterans, artists, professionals, religious organizations and proponents of education, health and other causes.
For many participants, there was also pride, and a kind of amazement, in being part of an event so large and diverse, and yet so pacific.
And there was a satisfying sense for many of having played a role in larger political processes, of doing something beyond voting to affect the outcome of an election widely seen as crucial to America's future on issues as varied as the war in Iraq, the huge national deficit, abortion, same-sex marriage, the environment and the nation's role in the world.
Gathering on the avenues and leafy residential side streets of Chelsea between 14th and 23rd Streets, the marchers stepped off shortly before noon, a cumbersome army led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the actor Danny Glover, the filmmaker Michael Moore and other celebrities.
Shorts and T-shirts, many branding Mr. Bush a liar, a criminal or a warmonger, were the uniforms of the day. Anti-Bush accessories went beyond banners, placards and buttons. There were fly swatters bearing Mr. Bush's face. Pallbearers carried a thousand mock coffins of cardboard draped in black or in American flags, representing the war dead in Iraq. And moving along the line of march was a papier-mâché tank with President Bush's head, wearing a cowboy hat, poking out the hatch.
On either side, the marchers were flanked by blue and camouflage-green lines of helmeted, flak-jacketed police officers and National Guardsmen, mostly watching quietly as the marchers moved north on Seventh Avenue toward the deckle-edged skyline of Midtown.
Overhead, police helicopters thwacked and a relentless sun beat down on the protesters and pavements.
Still, the protesters were exuberant. Shouting insults and obscenities at Mr. Bush, raising placards proclaiming "Drop Bush, Not Bombs" and "Eradicate Mad Cowboy Disease," they marched past the Garden hour after hour in masses that poured out barrages of abuse. But inside the Garden, no one was home to hear it. Aside from workers making final preparations, the arena was a decorous empty shell hung with patriots' bunting a day before the delegates' arrival. That hardly mattered to the protesters, whose outpourings were aimed mainly at news media, anyway.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Michael Wilson, Randal C. Archibold, Diane Cardwell, Ann Farmer, Colin Moynihan, John Holl and Judy Tong.
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Thousands Protest Effort to Oust Mayor of Mexico City
August 30, 2004
By GINGER THOMPSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/international/americas/30mexico.html
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 29 - Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of this capital on Sunday to protest a legal battle that could force its leftist mayor from office and ruin his chances of running for president.
Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 50, a leader of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party, marched with supporters to the Zócalo, the city's central plaza. He delivered a defiant speech, urging this country's bitterly divided political forces to unite behind a plan to combat corruption and poverty.
"We are not going to be beaten," Mr. López told the crowd, estimated by the police at 200,000. "No matter what happens, I am going to continue fighting for my principles."
In the four years since Mr. López became mayor of the most populous city in the Americas, with more than 20 million people, he has become Mexico's most popular politician, with polls consistently showing him as the leading contender to succeed President Vicente Fox in 2006.
Mr. López has won broad support, from Mexico's wealthiest business leaders to its poorest street vendors, for revitalizing the city's crumbling historic center, expanding clogged freeways and providing monthly payments to people over 70.
In recent months, however, he has been besieged by scandal. In March, hidden cameras recorded one of his principal political operators, René Bejarano, accepting wads of cash from a businessman seeking city construction contracts. Mr. López's former finance minister has been accused of using public money for lavish gambling trips to Las Vegas.
Now, the Mexican Congress, dominated by opponents of Mr. López, is considering a vote to impeach him and strip him of his official immunity from prosecution to face charges that his government ignored a court order to stop construction of a public road on private property.
Mr. López said the legal challenge and the videos were part of a conspiracy led by Mr. Fox to destroy his chances of winning the presidency. If he faces criminal charges, he will be barred from running for office.
In his speech, Mr. López insisted that he had not broken the law. But he argued that the charges against him were too petty a reason to remove a mayor from office. Even many who do not support Mr. López say that prohibiting him from running for president on a legal technicality could further disillusion the Mexican electorate and undermine the country's young democracy. Many demonstrators on Sunday wore stickers that read, "Say what you want, I am with López Obrador." One banner read, "If it's war they want, we will give them war."
"We are the voice of the people," said Graciela Alcaraz, 83. "And we are here to support López Obrador because he is the only political leader who worries that people like us have something decent to eat."
Still, it was clear that the scandals had hurt his popularity and plunged his party into its worst crisis.
Critics and supporters alike said the mayor had performed poorly under the pressure. They say he has isolated himself from his cabinet and closest advisers, showing an increasingly authoritarian political style.
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NEWS ANALYSIS
Upstaging Before the Show in True New York Fashion
August 30, 2004
By TODD S. PURDUM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30assess.html
In a few dozen blocks of the same slender island, two worlds collided yesterday: the Republican convention's calculated claims to patriotism and the presidency met elaborately planned and heavily Democratic street protests that turned those same arguments back at President Bush - in ways that might help, or hurt, both sides.
The demonstrations were New York City's biggest in decades, and the most emphatic at any national political convention since Democrats and demonstrators turned against each other in fury over Vietnam in Chicago in 1968. But the first day was overwhelmingly peaceful, and the demonstrators doused a good bit of Mr. Bush's intended message with television images of dissent.
"New York certainly is an exciting city," Brad Freeman, a delegate from Los Angeles and one of Mr. Bush's old friends and longtime fund-raisers, said in one of the milder understatements since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for the Dutch. "We'll have to wait until Friday to see what kind of a city it is for a Republican convention."
This was not the reception the Republicans had planned. They chose New York to evoke the moment of national unity that rallied Americans to Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, only to find protesters claiming Mr. Bush had forfeited that goodwill by attacking Iraq. The marchers carried placards calling Mr. Bush "the next Milosevic" and demanding, "What would Jesus bomb?"
The Republicans stuck to their script in the face of the flak, hoping that if they can make it here - for at least four days - they can make it anywhere. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at Ellis Island, opposite the gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline, and praised Mr. Bush as "a man calm in a crisis, comfortable with responsibility and determined to do everything necessary to protect our people."
And some of the delegates suggested that the protests would backfire to Mr. Bush's benefit, by painting Senator John Kerry - whose sister, Peggy, joined some of the weekend's events - as captive to demonstrators outside the mainstream.
"I left God's country," said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. "They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about. I'm as confident about Bush being re-elected as I am that eggs are going to be in New York tomorrow morning.''
But some veteran conventiongoers suggested that the Republicans would be unwise to count their chickens just yet. In their own outspoken way, the protesters were making precisely the same point as Mr. Mosley, with children in strollers, grandparents on canes, all accepting the withering Sunday heat - and the overwhelming security presence intended to keep the march past Madison Square Garden orderly.
"I've been going to Republican conventions since 1972, and I've never seen a convention with as many protesters in the streets," said David Gergen, who has worked for several Republican presidents, and Bill Clinton. "The irony is that was a convention held here because of echoes of 9/11, but it opens with echoes of Chicago and the Vietnam war.
"The protests are anti-Bush, with heavy antiwar overtones, but this is Chicago without the fisticuffs, without the fight, without the bloodshed - so far," Mr. Gergen added. "To interpret this politically is hard, but my gut is that large, peaceful protests are not what the Republicans want. The protesters are stealing the story for the first day and drowning out the Republican message. If there's violence, that could all change."
To be sure, a seething anger pulsed throughout the protesting crowds. T-shirts and signs branded Mr. Bush a warmonger, a liar or a criminal, and there were fly-swatters with an image of his face. Two protesters, Jim Higgins and Kathy Roberts, dressed in suits made of duct tape to spoof Mr. Bush's handling of national security.
"We're occupying Iraq, but we're using duct tape here at home," Mr. Higgins said.
Moira Weidenborner, an English teacher and native New Yorker, sat on the corner of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue before the march began, straw hat in hand, in a shirt that said: "Justice, No War." She said the people she had met on the streets were "a very broad spectrum."
"There's all this attention on the radicals, which makes me upset," Ms. Weidenborner said. "Look around you today: It is middle class, it is working class, it is just people who want to speak their mind."
But Jason Glodt, executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party, said he thought the protesters did "reflect the base of the Democratic Party," and added: "I hope that all Americans are taking a close look at those protesters and what they represent. I don't think they represent American values.
"It's not their freedom of speech that we disagree with," Mr. Glodt said, "it's the content of what they're saying. It really only motivates us even more to go home and work harder at the grass-roots level and make sure people are going out and voting."
A certain clash of cultures is inevitable when so much of red-state America crams into so few square miles of the blue-state Big Apple. The White House was so concerned that the Republicans be gracious guests that it issued a stern warning to administration officials attending the convention not to misbehave at cocktail parties and turn down gifts worth more than $20, The Chicago Tribune reported.
For its part, the city's host committee plastered the Garden with posters reminding delegates that New York has 18,000 restaurants, 662 miles of subway track, 150 museums and 1,700 parks - in short, that it's still a helluva town. And the contrasts were by no means all hostile.
On the empty floor of the Garden Sunday afternoon, Senator George Allen of Virginia, a stalwart of his party's conservative wing, gamely practiced his convention speech, competing genially with a troupe of convention performers who burst into songs from Broadway shows, including "Tonight" from "West Side Story," a collaboration by four gay men, New Yorkers - and Americans - all.
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