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NUCLEAR
U.S. Pushes Effort to Lower Nuke Threats
U.S. Lifts Curbs on Nuclear, Space Exports to India
US lifts export controls on equipment for Indian nuclear facilities
IAEA Iran resolution: Full text
U.S. fails to bring UN into Iran nuclear case
Rafsanjani Warns IAEA Over Setting Deadline
Allies at IAEA Meeting Reject U.S. Stand on Iran
UN Calls on Iran to Freeze Nuke Enrichment Plans
Nuclear Agency's Action on Iran Falls Short of U.S. Goal
U.N. Tells Iran to Suspend Nuke Program
Stubborn differences persist on Iran text at UN atomic agency
North Korea Nuke Mess Made by Bush
South Korea renews pledge not to develop nuclear weapons
North Korea in Nerve Gas Import Scare
N.Korea Vows Will Never Dismantle Its Nuclear Arms
South Korea Says It Won't Develop Nukes
An End to Ambiguity
The Threat of Loose Nukes Is One of Our Own Making
Dynamite fells dome
LANL to move nuke materials from canyon
Operator of Nuclear Plant Readying Strike Substitutes
State seeks 2nd opinion on VY uprate
State seeks new opinion on Yankee
Hanford medical program draws protest
MILITARY
Huge cache of arms seized near Wana
Halliburton Is a Handy Target for Democrats
Seven in Baghdad Are Killed In Two Car Bomb Attacks
Kidnapped by Ansar Al-Islam:
Hostage in Iraq: Five days in Hell
Chechen Accused in School Siege Takes Responsibility in Web Posting
Putin Says Russia to Strike Terrorists
U.S. intelligence fiascoes
UN Council Votes for Resolution on Darfur Abuses
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
House GOP Leaders Back Creating Intelligence Chief
POLITICS
Parallels Drawn Between CBS Memos, Texan's Postings
Bush Cites Hussein's Potential Weapons
Interview with Secretary Colin L. Powell
ACTIVISTS
Yoko Ono gives peace prize to Mordechai Vanunu
Trauma notwithstanding, former hostage continues humanitarian battle
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
U.S. Pushes Effort to Lower Nuke Threats
September 18, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Security.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Saturday called on countries to find and secure nuclear and other dangerous material to keep it out of the hands of terrorists.
Abraham, speaking at a two-day conference of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, said it was important to create an inventory of such high-risk materials worldwide, including substances at nuclear-enrichment or reprocessing plants.
The challenge is ``to think creatively, to predict the unforeseen, and to stay several steps ahead of a determined and imaginative enemy,'' Abraham said.
Abraham announced the initiative in May as a $450 million plan to rid the world of the ``dirty bomb'' threat by keeping nuclear materials out of terrorist hands.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, concerns have grown that terrorists might be trying to acquire material for a dirty bomb -- a device that uses conventional explosives to spread low-level radioactive material over city blocks.
It has no atomic chain reaction and requires no highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Both materials are normally kept under tight security, so they are difficult to obtain.
Instead, the radioactive component is of lower-grade isotopes, such as those used in medicine or research. If a dirty bomb were to be detonated, the radiation release probably would be small.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. nuclear watchdog -- estimates as many as 110 countries do not have adequate controls over radioactive devices that could be used to build an explosive device that would spread radioactive material.
Abraham said Saturday that prevention requires international collaboration, the sharing of the latest technological and scientific expertise and joint shouldering of the expenses of securing and disposal. He announced that the Department of Energy will give $3 million to the IAEA to help finance such efforts.
He said Washington and Moscow would work together to bring back to Russia by the end of this year all the fresh, highly enriched uranium fuel that originated there and achieve by 2010 the return of all spent fuel that originated in Russia.
Other goals of the initiative are to complete the return to the United States of all U.S-origin spent reactor fuel from around the world by the end of the decade, and to convert civilian research reactors using highly enriched uranium to reactors processing low-enriched uranium instead. Highly enriched uranium is weapons grade.
``In every one of the programs I have just mentioned, we are committed to working as fast as possible within the boundaries of technological, scientific and diplomatic feasibility,'' Abraham said in his opening speech.
The conference was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency.
-------- india / pakistan
U.S. Lifts Curbs on Nuclear, Space Exports to India
September 18, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-india-sanctions-usa.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States has lifted decades-old export restrictions on equipment for India's commercial space program and nuclear power facilities, a sign of the increasingly close ties between Washington and New Delhi.
U.S. firms have not been allowed to sell sophisticated equipment or technology to India -- seen in Washington as a Cold War ally of the Soviet Union -- as part of a ban in place for decades to prevent their use for military purposes.
Washington tightened the curbs after announcing tough trade sanctions on India and Pakistan for their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998.
The Indian foreign ministry said on Saturday that Washington had eased the export restrictions after New Delhi addressed U.S. concerns about weapons proliferation under the so-called Next Steps in Strategic Partnership initiative set up in January.
``These efforts have enabled the United States to make modifications to the U.S. export licensing policies that will foster cooperation in commercial space programs and permit certain exports to power plants at safeguarded nuclear facilities,'' the statement said.
The United States eased the 1998 sanctions after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, increasingly seeing India and Pakistan as allies in its war on terrorism.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the two countries could now take cooperation a step further.
``They agreed to expand cooperation in three areas: civilian nuclear activities, civilian space programs and high-technology trade. In addition, we agreed to expand our dialogue on missile defense.'' said Ereli after a meeting in Washington between U.S. and Indian officials on Friday.
``So I think what this shows is a growing relationship...in terms of the number of issues we're dealing with, the importance of the issues and the strength of the cooperation. And the traffic that you see between New Delhi and Washington is a reflection of that.''
The economic reforms India launched 13 years ago and its prowess in the software and engineering have brought Washington and New Delhi closer together and trade between the two nations has risen significantly.
----
US lifts export controls on equipment for Indian nuclear facilities
18 September 2004
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/107257/1/.html
WASHINGTON: In a significant move the United States has agreed to lift export controls on equipment for nuclear facilities in India after New Delhi assured it would address American non-proliferation concerns.
US export licensing policies will also be eased to expand bilateral cooperation in commercial space programs, officials said after talks in Washington between Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and US Undersecretary of State for political affairs Marc Grossman.
A joint statement described the agreement, ahead of talks between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush on Tuesday, as "major progress."
"What this shows is a growing relationship, both in terms of the number of issues we're dealing with, the importance of the issues and the strength of the cooperation," US State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.
The deal was the first phase under the "Next Steps In Strategic Partnership With India" agreed in January between President Bush and Singh's predecesor Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Officials said the agreement Friday marked a major milestone in Indian efforts to break out of the isolation from international high-technology after US lifted sanctions slapped on India's nuclear and space programmes following New Delhi's nuclear test blasts in 1998.
The sanctions resulted in a freeze on exchanges in nuclear and other high-tech sectors such as "dual-use technology" which finds applications in both civilian and military use.
"Implementation of the (agreement) will lead to significant economic benefits for both countries and improve regional and global security," the statement said.
In January, the United States and India agreed to expand cooperation in three specific areas: civilian nuclear activities, civilian space programs, and high-technology trade.
In addition, they agreed to expand dialogue on missile defense.
The two governments have been locked in talks since then over India's implementation of measures to address proliferation concerns and to ensure compliance with US export controls, officials said.
"These efforts have enabled the United States to make modifications to US export licensing policies that will foster cooperation in commercial space programs and permit certain exports to power plants at safeguarded nuclear facilities," the statement said.
Among the steps taken by the United States was the removal of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) headquarters from a so-called "entity list" of the Department of Commerce.
They are fully consistent with US government nonproliferation laws, obligations, and objectives, the statement said.
Officials said India had to give assurances that technologies it received from the United States did not fall into the hands of "rogue states."
"It's nothing like iron clad guarantees," Indian Foreign Secretary Saran said of the agreement. The two sides would be involved in "a phased way of cooperation," he said.
Indian Prime Minister Singh, who took office on May 22, will meet Bush for the first time in New York next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
-------- iran
IAEA Iran resolution: Full text
Saturday, 18 September, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3669530.stm
The following is the full text of the resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran on 18 September 2004.
BACKGROUND
The Board of Governors
(a) Recalling the resolutions adopted by the board on 18 June 2004, 13 March 2004, 26 November 2003, and on 12 September 2003 and the statement by the board of 19 June 2003,
(b) Noting with appreciation the director general's report of 1 September 2004, on the implementation of safeguards in Iran,
(c) Noting the director general's assessment that the agency is making steady progress towards understanding Iran's nuclear programmes, but that further work is still required on a number of questions and issues, notably contamination and the scope of the P2 centrifuge programme, and that there are other issues that will also require further follow-up, for example the timeframe of Iran's plutonium separation experiments, Iran has not heeded repeated calls from the board to suspend, as a confidence building measure, all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities (d) Noting with serious concern that, as detailed in the director general's report, Iran has not heeded repeated calls from the board to suspend, as a confidence building measure, all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities,
(e) Also concerned that, at its Uranium Conversion Facility [UCF], Iran is planning to introduce 37 tons of yellowcake, as this would run counter to the request made of Iran by the board in resolution GOV/2004/49,
(f) Recognising the right of states to the development and practical application of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, including the production of electric power, consistent with their Treaty obligations, with due consideration for the needs of the developing countries, and
(g) Stressing the need for effective safeguards to prevent nuclear material being used for prohibited purposes, in contravention of agreements, and underlining the vital importance of effective safeguards for facilitating co-operation in the field of nuclear energy,
DEMANDS
1. Strongly urges that Iran respond positively to the director general's findings on the provision of access and information by taking such steps as are required by the agency and/or requested by the board in relation to the implementation of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, including the provision of prompt access to locations and personnel, and by providing further information and explanations when required by the agency and proactively, to assist the agency to understand the full extent and nature of Iran's enrichment programme and to take all steps within its power to clarify the outstanding issues before the board's 25 November meeting, specifically including the sources and reasons for enriched uranium contamination, and the import, manufacture, and use of centrifuges; 2. Emphasises the continuing importance of Iran acting in accordance with all provisions of the Additional Protocol including by providing all access required in a timely manner; and urges Iran once again to ratify its Protocol without delay;
3. Deeply regrets that the implementation of Iranian voluntary decisions to suspend enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, notified to the agency on 29 December 2003 and 24 February 2004, fell significantly short of the agency's understanding of the scope of those commitments and also that Iran has since reversed some of those decisions; stresses that such suspension would provide the board with additional confidence in Iran's future activities; and considers it necessary, to promote confidence, that Iran immediately suspend all enrichment-related activities, including the manufacture or import of centrifuge components, the assembly and testing of centrifuges, and the production of feed material, including through tests or production at the UCF, under agency verification so that this could be confirmed in the reports requested in paragraphs 7 and 8 below;
4. Calls again on Iran, as a further confidence-building measure, voluntarily to reconsider its decision to start construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;
5. Underlines the need for the full and prompt co-operation with the agency of third countries in relation to the clarification of outstanding issues, and expresses appreciation for the co-operation received by the agency to date;
6. Appreciates the professional and impartial efforts of the director general and the Secretariat to implement Iran's NPT Safeguards Agreement, and, pending its entry into force, Iran's Additional Protocol, as well as to verify Iran's suspension of enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, and to investigate supply routes and sources;
7. Requests the director general to submit in advance of the November board:
- a report on the implementation of this resolution;
- a recapitulation of the agency's findings on the Iranian nuclear programme since September 2002, as well as a full account of past and present Iranian co-operation with the agency, including the timing of declarations, and a record of the development of all aspects of the programme, as well as a detailed analysis of the implications of those findings in relation to Iran's implementation of its Safeguards Agreement;
8. Also requests the director general to submit in advance of the November board a report on Iran's response to the requests made of it by the board in previous resolutions, especially requests relating to full suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities;
9. Decides that at its November session it will decide whether or not further steps are appropriate in relation to:
- Iran's obligations under its NPT Safeguards Agreement;
- the requests made of Iran, as confidence building measures, by the board in this and previous resolutions;
and to remain seized of the matter.
----
U.S. fails to bring UN into Iran nuclear case
Craig S. Smith
Saturday, September 18, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=539452.html
VIENNA The United States once again failed Friday to persuade the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council, accepting instead a repetition of calls for the country to stop uranium enrichment activities and clear up questions about its nuclear ambitions.
A resolution making those calls is expected to be passed by the agency's 35-member board on Saturday, although several countries were trying late on Friday to water down the resolution's language further.
The draft of the resolution as it read Friday would demand a full response by Iran before the agency's board meeting Nov. 25.
The United States has been pressing the UN agency for nearly a year to find Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty after the discovery two years ago that the country had hidden much of its nuclear activity for nearly 20 years. Iran has been slow to divulge details of its clandestine research, which the United States is convinced encompasses a nuclear weapons program.
But many other countries, led by Britain, France, Germany and Russia, who are not convinced that Iran is intent on building a bomb, favor a softer approach.
The international agency has carried out more than a dozen unannounced inspections of Iranian facilities.
This week, the agency's head, Mohamed ElBaradei, praised Iran's cooperation and said most issues had been clarified.
He said, for example, that traces of highly enriched uranium found on imported centrifuge parts in Iran might well have come from outside the country, as Iran insists.
But the United States remains certain that inconsistencies in the program and other clues point to a secret weapons program.
The United States suspects a partly buried bunker at a munitions plant in Parchin, 30 kilometers, or 20 miles, southwest of Tehran, could be used to test high-intensity explosives used in a nuclear implosion bomb, in which a sphere of explosives surrounds a core of highly enriched uranium or plutonium.
Hossein Mousavian, head of the foreign policy committee of Iran's Supreme National security Council, said Friday that Iran would grant the UN watchdog agency access to the site, though it is not required to do so.
"We have never rejected an IAEA inspection," he said.
Mousavian argued that Iran was being unfairly penalized, saying that the country had proposed making the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone while Israel, which has nuclear weapons, had never signed the Nonproliferation Treaty or accepted agency inspections.
"There is clearly a double standard," Mousavian said, adding that Iranian religious leaders had issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1996 that forbade the use of all weapons of mass destruction.
"For Iranians, a religious fatwa is more important than any international convention," he said.
Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran warned Friday in Tehran that Iran would lodge a complaint at the International Court of Justice against the agency for acting outside its powers if the agency demanded that the country stop its enrichment activities.
According to the draft of the resolution, Iran must clear up "outstanding issues" in time for ElBaradei to prepare a report for the November meeting and "immediately suspend all enrichment-related activities." It says the agency board will decide in November "whether or not further steps are appropriate."
----
Rafsanjani Warns IAEA Over Setting Deadline
Parisa Hafezi
Reuters, Arab News,
18 September 2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/September/18n/Rafsanjani%20Warns%20IAEA%20Over%20Setting%20Deadline.htm
TEHRAN - Iran will take the UN nuclear watchdog to the International Court of Justice if it sets a deadline for the Islamic state to commit to a new freeze on uranium enrichment activities, a top Iranian leader said yesterday.
Influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University that Iran would lodge a complaint at The Hague tribunal against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for acting outside its powers.
"If it sets a deadline to halt some of our nuclear activities we have the right to go to The Hague," Rafsanjani said. "Passing such an unjust resolution with a deadline is a violation of the law."
Washington accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear arms under cover of a civilian atomic program. Iran denies this, saying it only wants to generate electricity.
The United States had been lobbying an IAEA meeting in Vienna to set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to halt its enrichment program or face UN Security Council economic sanctions.
But a diplomat said on Thursday that Washington had reached a compromise with France, Britain and Germany with a resolution calling for an immediate halt to the enrichment program, but not setting a deadline.
The text still has to be approved by most of the 35 nations on the IAEA governing board.
In remarks broadcast live on state radio, Rafsanjani called the debate a "scandal", saying the IAEA was obliged to offer technological assistance to Iran based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
As a signatory to the NPT, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium - a process that can be used both for nuclear power plants or atomic weapons.
Rafsanjani, a key adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, said Iran would not yield to mounting international pressure to abandon its nuclear program.
"We have never surrendered to pressures and threats," he said.
In Vienna, IAEA has found no sign of nuclear-related activity at a site in Iran called Parchin that several US officials said may be linked to secret atom bomb research, Mohamed El-Baradei said.
"We are aware of this new site that has been referred to. We do not have any indication that this site has nuclear-related activities. However, we continue to investigate this and other sites (in Iran)," El-Baradei told reporters.
El-Baradei, who heads the UN body, also dismissed the allegation that he had suppressed information about Parchin in his latest progress report on inspections in Iran.
A prominent international expert said on Wednesday that new satellite images showed the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran may be a site for research, testing and production of nuclear weapons.
Two US officials said on Thursday that Parchin clearly demonstrated Iran's intention to develop atomic weapons.
El-Baradei said he would be going to South Korea in early October to discuss recent allegations about undeclared nuclear research there, including the enrichment of a small amount of uranium and separation of a minute quantity of plutonium.
----
Allies at IAEA Meeting Reject U.S. Stand on Iran
Draft Asks for Suspension of Nuclear Work
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30047-2004Sep17.html
VIENNA, Sept. 17 -- The Bush administration failed on Friday to persuade its closest allies and other members of the International Atomic Energy Agency to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran, settling instead on another request that Tehran voluntarily drop its nuclear program.
A draft resolution, likely to be approved by the IAEA's 35-member board on Saturday, calls on Iran to suspend suspect nuclear work before the board meets again in late November. It also asks the Iranian government to provide U.N. inspectors with additional information about nuclear equipment and technology bought on the international black market.
Iranian officials said they had addressed some of the issues raised by the IAEA and were prepared to meet other requests.
For the past year, the U.S. government has been trying bring the Iranian nuclear issue to the agenda of the U.N. Security Council, arguing that Iran's government is hiding a nuclear weapons program. Bush administration officials had hoped the meeting this week would show progress on the issue before the November presidential election. But European and American diplomats said the negotiations produced more friction than consensus and said they were not sure the United States would have enough support from member countries to move the issue to the Security Council.
The U.S. negotiating team presented a draft resolution at the opening of talks on Monday that would have declared Iran in violation of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The U.S. proposal also would have imposed a deadline of Oct. 31 for Iran to halt all nuclear activities. Failure to meet the deadline would have forced the issue to the Security Council by November.
The U.S. proposals were opposed by a group of influential members -- Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Russia and China. Those governments opted instead to give U.N. inspectors more time to investigate, and then make a final diplomatic effort to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Nevertheless, administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the three-page resolution was a victory, because it called on Iran to "immediately suspend all enrichment-related activities."
But the resolution does not declare Iran in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, nor does it repeat tough diplomatic language that appeared in a June resolution, in which the IAEA board characterized Iranian cooperation as deplorable. Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA director, complained at that time that Iran had failed to fully cooperate with the agency's investigation.
ElBaradei's most recent report gave the Iranians high marks for improved cooperation. But it warned Iran not to backtrack on ending any suspicious programs. IAEA inspectors have been investigating Iran's nuclear program for two years and have uncovered secret experiments and equipment. The Iranian government says they are part of a program to produce energy, not weapons.
An Iranian negotiator, Hoseyn Moussavian, noted that the resolution cited the legal right of all countries to develop a nuclear energy program. He said Iran would maintain suspension of its uranium enrichment efforts as a confidence-building measure.
John R. Bolton, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control, spent two days in sessions with his European counterparts before the opening of the IAEA board meeting last Monday. U.S. officials hoped for a consensus, but they said tensions instead had increased.
At one point, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw phoned Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and said British diplomats were having difficulty with newly named U.S. negotiators, officials said. The U.S. team is led by Ambassador Jackie W. Sanders, a close associate of Bolton's based in Geneva and in charge of arms control issues.
Diplomats said British, French and German negotiators overruled key language sought by the United States and disagreed with the United States on most details of the final resolution.
----
UN Calls on Iran to Freeze Nuke Enrichment Plans
September 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog called on Iran on Saturday to immediately halt activities related to uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make atomic weapons.
The resolution demanded Iran suspend all ``enrichment-related activities'' and said the agency's governing board regretted Iran's suspension of enrichment as promised last year had fallen far short of what had been expected.
France, Britain and Germany co-sponsored the toughly worded resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors after a week of closed-door haggling over the wording.
The United States failed to get the Europeans to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, or even include a ``trigger'' clause for a report in November. But it fully endorsed the resolution.
``The clock is now ticking on Iran to fully comply with the resolution and abandon its nuclear weapons program or face referral to the U.N. Security Council,'' U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said a statement.
The resolution also called on Iran to grant full and prompt access to IAEA inspectors and provide them with any further information needed before the next IAEA meeting on Nov. 25.
The IAEA has been investigating Iran's nuclear program for two years. Although it has found many concealed activities that could be used to develop weapons, it has found no ``smoking gun'' that would prove U.S. allegations of Iranian bomb plans.
``The board has sent a very powerful message to Iran,'' IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said it was ``most important that Iran suspends all activities regarding enrichment.''
Enrichment is legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but it is the most controversial part of Iran's program since it can produce material for weapons.
Iran denies any plan to develop nuclear arms and insists its program is intended only to produce electricity. It says its enrichment facilities would be used only to make low-enriched fuel for power plants, not highly-enriched fuel for bombs.
NO LEGAL OBLIGATION
Iran chief delegate Hossein Mousavian said Iran did not have to comply with the demand, since the resolution distinguished between legal obligations and voluntary actions aimed at building confidence like the enrichment freeze.
U.S. Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Reuters in a telephone interview from Washington that Mousavian's comments were ``pettifoggery'' -- squabbling over petty details.
``The ball is entirely in Iran's court. If they're prepared to give up their nuclear weapons program as Libya did, then we have possibilities to proceed,'' he said, adding that failure to do so would bring Tehran to the Security Council.
The resolution says the board will decide whether ``further steps'' were needed in relation to Iran's commitments under the NPT, which Western diplomats said meant a Security Council referral.
Iran says it has a right to enrich uranium but has not enriched uranium since promising France, Britain and Germany last year that it would freeze the program. But it angered the Europeans by continuing to make and test enrichment centrifuges.
--------
Nuclear Agency's Action on Iran Falls Short of U.S. Goal
September 18, 2004
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/international/middleeast/18nukes.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
VIENNA, Sept. 17 - The United States once again failed to persuade the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday that it should refer Iran's suspect nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council, accepting instead a repetition of calls for the country to stop uranium enrichment activities and clear up remaining questions about its nuclear ambitions.
A resolution making those calls is expected to be approved by the agency's 35-member board on Saturday, though several countries were trying to water down the resolution's language further late Friday. According to the current draft of the resolution, it will demand a full response from Iran before the agency's board meeting on Nov. 25 .
American officials say they have made progress in a week of grueling negotiations.
"Whatever the precise wording of the resolution, the issue of Security Council referral will be up at the November board meeting and everyone knows it," said John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for nonproliferation affairs, speaking from Washington. "We're quite satisfied with that."
Washington has been pressing the nuclear agency to find Iran in breach of its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty, after the discovery two years ago that the country had hidden much of its nuclear activities for nearly 20 years. Iran has been slow to divulge details of its clandestine research operation, which the United States is convinced harbors a nuclear weapons program.
Many other countries, led by Britain, France and Germany, have favored a softer approach, though a senior Bush administration official expressed confidence on Friday that the "tactical gap" in how to deal with Iran was narrowing.
Iran's nuclear program dates from the late 1960's, when it began developing nuclear energy at the urging of the United States. Iran eventually contracted Siemens, the German company, to build a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant in the port of Busheir.
But construction of the plant was stopped during the Islamic revolution of 1979, and Iran soon became an international pariah. As a result, the country argues, it was forced to rely on the black market to save its nuclear program, in which it had already invested billions of dollars. It bought centrifuge designs from Pakistan and imported technology from a secret network of suppliers that spanned the globe.
In 1995, Iran signed a contract with Russia to resume work on the Busheir plant and soon began assembling centrifuges, which are used to concentrate uranium's unstable 235 isotope at levels necessary for a nuclear reaction. Iran will need uranium with 3.5 percent of the isotope to fuel its Busheir plant. But the same centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium to the higher levels needed for nuclear weapons.
Under the Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants, but not disclosing the enrichment program was a clear breach of its obligations under the treaty. The program was disclosed by a group of Iranian dissidents in August 2002.
Last year, Britain, France and Germany persuaded Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment efforts to build confidence among the international community while it clarifies questions about its nuclear program. In return, the three European countries promised to transfer nuclear energy technology to Iran and to resist American efforts to send the country's case to the Security Council. Iran plans to build six more 1,000 megawatt reactors.
Since then, the International Atomic Energy Agency has been trying to answer all remaining questions about Iran's nuclear program and has carried out more than a dozen unannounced inspections of Iranian facilities. This week the agency's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, praised Iran's cooperation and said most issues had been clarified. He said, for example, that traces of highly enriched uranium found on imported centrifuge parts in Iran might well have come from outside the country, as Iran insists. But the United States remains certain that inconsistencies in the program and other clues point to a secret weapons program.
Most troubling to the United States is Iran's insistence on continuing its enrichment program.
While Iran says the program is to produce low-enriched uranium to fuel its Busheir power plant, the centrifuges could quickly be converted for making weapons-grade uranium.
Experts say that it will take Iran decades to build the tens of thousands of centrifuges necessary to produce a year's worth of fuel for the Busheir plant, but that it needs only about 2,000 centrifuges to make enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb a year. It would need even fewer if it started with the low-enriched uranium promised by Russia as fuel for the Busheir plant.
Frustrated by the nuclear agency's continued pressure and the lack of action on the European promises of technology transfers, Iran announced in June that it was resuming the production and assembly of centrifuges. It has maintained a yearlong freeze on the use of those centrifuges, but warned this week that the suspension would not be forever.
Iran raised alarms earlier this month by confirming that it was ready to convert more than 40 tons of yellowcake, or uranium oxide, into the uranium hexafluoride gas that is fed into centrifuges for enrichment. Iran's uranium conversion plant operates under International Atomic Energy Agency controls, but the agency has urged the country to stop using the facility in order to ease international concerns.
Hossein Mousavian, who is in charge of the foreign policy committee of Iran's Supreme National security Council, said Iran was prepared to accept any initiative by the agency to ensure that its enrichment does not exceed the 3.5 percent level needed to fuel the Busheir plant. But he said preventing Iran from enriching uranium was beyond the agency's authority.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, warned Friday in Tehran that should the agency demand that the country stop its enrichment activities a complaint would be lodged against it at the International Court of Justice for acting outside its powers.
Washington had lobbied hard to give Iran an Oct. 31 deadline to stop all enrichment activity and meet other demands, but acceded Friday to Britain, France and Germany's preference for a more flexible resolution.
According to the current draft of the resolution, Iran must clear up "outstanding issues" in time for Mr. ElBaradei to prepare a report for the November meeting and "immediately suspend all enrichment-related activities." It says the agency's board will decide in November "whether or not further steps are appropriate."
The vaguer language, similar to that of previous resolutions on Iran over the past year, leaves the agency the option of closing its investigation without referring the country's case to the Security Council.
--------
U.N. Tells Iran to Suspend Nuke Program
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 18, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The U.N. atomic watchdog agency demanded Iran suspend all uranium enrichment activities and set a November timetable for compliance in a vote Saturday that U.S. officials praised as ``isolating'' Tehran and increasing pressure for it to rein in its nuclear program.
The resolution fell short of a strict deadline sought by the United States, which accuses Iran of seeking to produce nuclear weapons. After the vote, U.S. officials urged the agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council in November for possible sanctions should it be found to have defied any of the resolution's conditions.
``The time for decisive action is approaching,'' chief U.S. delegate Jackie Sanders told the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors.
``To wait until the IAEA finds the nuclear weapons ... is to wait until it is too late,'' he said. ``With every passing week, Iran moves that much closer to reaching the point where neither we, nor any other international body, will be able to prevent it from achieving nuclear weapons capacity.''
The 35-nation board unanimously approved the toughly worded resolution that said the agency ``considers it necessary'' that Iran freeze all programs related to uranium enrichment, a key process that can be used to make nuclear weapons or to produce reactor fuel for energy generation.
The resolution expressed alarm at Iranian plans to convert more than 40 tons of raw uranium into uranium hexafluoride -- the gas that when spun in centrifuges turns into enriched uranium.
It also said it ``strongly urges'' Iran to meet all demands by the agency in its investigation of the country's nearly two decades of clandestine nuclear activity -- including unrestricted access to sites, information and personnel that can shed light on still unanswered questions on whether Tehran was interested in the atom for nuclear weapons.
Iran insists its nuclear program aims only to produce energy and not to develop weapons.
Suggesting that the Islamic Republic could answer to the U.N. Security Council should it defy the demands, the resolution said the next board meeting in November ``will decide whether or not further steps are appropriate'' in ensuring Iran complies.
Still, the text appeared to leave Iran wiggle room. While demanding Iran suspend all uranium enrichment activities, the resolution also recognized nations' right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
By giving the Iranians room to maneuver on enrichment, the resolution appeared to fall far short of what the Americans had wanted coming into the meeting. Washington had pushed to drop mention of countries' rights to peaceful nuclear technology and fought for an Oct. 31 deadline, with the understanding that if Iran failed to comply the board would then automatically begin deliberations on Security Council referral.
The phrasing accepted instead left it up to the board to debate what action -- if any -- to take when it reconvenes Nov. 25 should Iran be found to have ignored the demand to freeze enrichment or other conditions.
Iran's chief delegate to the meeting asserted that Washington was frustrated in its main goals -- ``putting deadline of Oct 31, (and) second an automatic trigger mechanism.''
``Both were neglected, and we have nothing like this in the resolution,'' Hossein Mousavian told reporters.
Before the vote, Mousavian held out the possibility of meeting the resolution's key demand of a suspension of all enrichment-related activities.
Iran's ``decision-makers will decide about the main request -- full suspension,'' in the next few days, he told The Associated press.
The United States insisted the resolution makes it clear that ``Iran remains completely isolated in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.''
``This resolution sends an unmistakable signal to Iran that continuing its nuclear weapons program will bring it inevitably before the (U.N.) Security Council,'' Sanders, the chief U.S. delegate, told reporters.
The resolution also called on IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei to provide a review of the findings of a more-than one year probe of Iran's nuclear activities which Tehran insists are strictly tailored toward generating electricity.
Iran's present suspension of enrichment falls short of international demands.
It says it is honoring a pledge not to put uranium hexafluoride gas into centrifuges, spin it and make enriched uranium. But the resolution calls for a stop as well to related activities, including a halt to making, assembling and testing centrifuges, and to producing the uranium hexafluoride.
Iran is not prohibited from enrichment under its obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It has for months faced international pressure to suspend such activities as a good-faith gesture, but the resolution went further by actually demanding a stop to enrichment and related activities.
On the Net:
IAEA: www.iaea.org
----
Stubborn differences persist on Iran text at UN atomic agency
VIENNA (AFP)
Sep 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040918131353.m1s450mz.html
The UN atomic agency was deadlocked Saturday in talks on a compromise US-European resolution to set a deadline for a review of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, with non-aligned nations challenging the text, diplomats said.
Britain, France and Germany went ahead and submitted the draft text late Friday even though there were still objections to it from non-aligned countries, which are against imposing a deadline on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.
The non-aligned states may even call for a vote on the two most disputed paragraphs of the resolution, an almost unheard of measure at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which tends to operate by consensus.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was meeting with non-aligned delegates in a last-ditch effort to reach a consensus ahead of a planned afternoon plenary session of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, which has 13 non-aligned members.
ElBaradei told reporters: "I think everybody's making an effort to reach a consensus," adding that "on issues like this the board and the international community have to be fully united."
The United States claims Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and has been lobbying strongly here for decisive action against the Islamic Republic.
Washington wanted to set an October 31 ultimatum for Tehran to fully suspend uranium enrichment and report on its other activities to the IAEA and for Iran to be automatically referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if it failed to do so.
But in a compromise, Washington and the so-called Euro 3 -- Britain, France and Germany -- set a November 25 deadline for a full review of Iran's nuclear program and called on Tehran to "immediately" suspend all uranium enrichment activities, with this also being reviewed in November.
But no specific IAEA action was required, according to a copy of a draft resolution obtained by AFP.
Non-aligned nations feel the wording is still too tough, and want to avoid making uranium enrichment, which is allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), something for which Iran can be sanctioned.
They want the IAEA only to judge Iran on its compliance with NPT safeguards, which focus on the diversion of nuclear material for military purposes.
Uranium can be enriched to make fuel for civilian reactors but also the explosive core for atomic bombs.
"The main interest NAM states have at the IAEA is acquiring peaceful nuclear technology and they fear that depriving Iran of enrichment would set a precedent for other states to be kept away from key atomic technologies," a senior IAEA official said.
But a European diplomat said the call to suspend uranium enrichment was too important to drop since controlling the nuclear fuel cycle is the key to building a bomb, a "breakout capacity" Iran should not have even if it is not overtly diverting nuclear materials for military purposes.
The diplomat said this would not set a precedent for other states.
US delegation chief Jackie Sanders read to reporters Saturday a statement from President George W. Bush's top non-proliferation official Under Secretary of State John Bolton which said: "The United States fully endorses the draft resolution."
"Iran remains completed isolated in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the draft resolution to be considered this morning makes that clear."
Iranian delegation chief Hossein Mousavian said Iran would decide within two or three days and based on its "national interests," whether to respect the IAEA call to fully suspend enrichment or to resume this key part of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment in October 2003 as a confidence-building measure but has continued support activities such as building the centrifuges that refine the uranium.
It recently alarmed the United States by saying that it would be carrying out the first stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, making the uranium gas that is the feed for centrifuges.
The United States wants to put an end to an IAEA investigation that began in February 2003.
-------- korea
North Korea Nuke Mess Made by Bush
antiwar.com
by Gordon Prather
September 18, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=3607
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) recognizes the "inalienable right" of all signatories to "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information" related to the "use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
That means that Iran has the "inalienable right" to acquire nuclear reactors or uranium-enrichment centrifuges from Russia.
On the other hand - thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton - the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is no-longer a NPT signatory, and hence, has no such "inalienable right."
Each no-nuke signatory agrees to conclude with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a Safeguards agreement. All "source" and "special fissionable materials" as well as any activities involving them are to be made subject to the IAEA Safeguards agreement. The IAEA is thereafter responsible for preventing their "diversion."
That means that Iran is required to subject to IAEA Safeguards all uranium, plutonium and thorium - in whatever form and however obtained - as well as all activities wherein safeguarded materials are transformed, produced or processed.
On the other hand, - thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton - the DPRK has no such requirement.
Under Article II, each no-nuke signatory agrees "not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons."
Iran, in agreeing to an Additional Protocol to their Safeguards Agreement, has essentially given the IAEA the authority to police that agreement.
But - thanks to Bush-Cheney-Bolton - the DPRK is no longer subject to the NPT and can now develop, test, manufacture and sell nukes.
Alas, until more no-nuke signatories follow the DPRK example and withdraw from the NPT, the Koreans will just have terrorists as customers for their nukes.
Candidate Kerry castigated President Bush last week, arguing that his preoccupation with Iraq had allowed the current DPRK nuke mess to develop. He claimed Bush had "pulled the rug out from under Kim Dae Jung," then president of South Korea, by refusing to endorse the Clinton-Kim policy of engagement with the DPRK.
The basis for the Clinton-Kim policy had been the U.S.-IAEA-DPRK Agreed Framework of 1994.
In 1992, the IAEA had essentially accused DPRK of having a clandestine nuke program.
The DPRK denied that it did, but agreed under the Agreed Framework to "freeze" all its nuclear programs, including abandoning the construction of additional Russian-supplied reactors from whose spent-fuel weapons-grade plutonium could be recovered, and make them subject to IAEA Safeguards. In return, an international consortium - led by South Korea - would construct in the DPRK two free conventional nuclear power plants.
In the interim, Clinton had agreed to provide 500,000 tons of free fuel oil, annually, to the DPRK.
Say what? Provide a half-million tons of free fuel oil every year for at least five more years to a Commie country that - technically - we have been at war with since 1950?
What to do?
How about this? In the Agreed Framework we promised on a stack of Bibles that we wouldn't attack them with nukes so long as they remained a no-nuke NPT-signatory. Why not provoke them into withdrawing from the NPT?
Why not?
First, tell South Korea's Kim in March 2001 that President Bush and Secretary Powell would not continue the talks with North Korea representatives begun the year before by President Clinton and Secretary Albright.
Next, have Bush say this about DPRK in his 2002 State of the Union Address:
"Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." Finally, in October 2002, have some anonymous State Department munchkin tell a few media sycophants that some anonymous DPRK official admitted to him at a cocktail party that they had a clandestine uranium-nuke program.
Never mind that the DPRK vehemently denies to this day having any such program. Never mind that to this day our intelligence community hasn't got the foggiest notion where this clandestine uranium-nuke program may be hiding. Cancel the free fuel-oil to DPRK.
And launch a preemptive attack at the other end of the axis of evil.
Well, that did it. DPRK withdrew from the NPT and has since recovered enough weapons-grade plutonium from its frozen spent fuel to make a half-dozen nukes.
You know, Kerry may have a point.
----
South Korea renews pledge not to develop nuclear weapons
Saturday September 18, 2004
(AFP)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040918/323/f2uht.html
SEOUL - South Korea has made a fresh pledge not to develop nuclear weapons as the UN nuclear watchdog was set to send a team of inspectors to look into the country's controversial past nuclear tests. "The government hereby declares again that it has no will to develop or possess nuclear weapons," the National Security Council said in a statement. "The government will stick to the principle of nuclear transparency and step up international cooperation," it said in a four-point statement.
The statement followed a meeting of the National Security Council, chaired by Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young. The meeting also drew together cabinet ministers in charge of foreign affairs, defence, science and technology, and intelligence.
Chung read the statement at a nationally televised press conference, also attended by other cabinet ministers.
It also said the government will continue to honor international regulations aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation.
"The government, while seeking to raise international trust and enhance transparency (in South Korea's nuclear activities), will ... expand the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," the statement said.
It said the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is a "very important policy goal" for South Korea, which relies on nuclear power for some 40 percent of its energy need.
Science and Technology Minister Oh Myung told journalists that the dispute should not dampen South Korea's peaceful nuclear energy development.
The NSC meeting took place a day before a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to arrive to investigate South Korea's past nuclear experiments.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed Friday in Vienna that the body was embarking on a new round of inspections in South Korea into the secret manufacture of small amounts of potentially bomb-grade enriched uranium and plutonium.
"We are getting very active and good cooperation on the part of the Republic of Korea," ElBaradei told reporters.
ElBaradei said Monday that 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of uranium metal was produced in undeclared conversion activities in the early 1980s and a small amount of this was used in 2000 to produce the enriched uranium.
ElBaradei expressed "serious concern" about the activities.
In Seoul, the science ministry said scientists produced about 150 kilograms of uranium metal in 1982 from phosphate ore at three undeclared facilities. Uranium metal can be used as nuclear fuel or as a radiation shield.
The facilities were dismantled after scientists used 3.5 kilograms of the uranium metal in 2000, it said, adding South Korea still keeps 134 kilograms in storage.
The ministry attributed the loss of the remaining 12.5 kilograms to natural wastage.
It asserted the experiments were purely for academic research but did not clarify why the production of uranium metal was undeclared.
South Korea is a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has ratified the Additional Protocol to the NPT that allows for wider IAEA inspections.
----
North Korea in Nerve Gas Import Scare
Sat 18 Sep 2004
Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3513709
North Korea was stopped by South Korea last year from acquiring 70 tons of sodium cyanide, a toxic chemical used to make sarin nerve gas, news reports said today.
North Korea attempted to import the chemical from Thailand in September last year before South Korea persuaded Bangkok to stop the shipment, the mass-circulation daily Chosun Ilbo quoted Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon as telling a National Assembly hearing yesterday.
Sodium cyanide is normally used to make fertilizers and in industrial plating. But treated with acids, it can turn into sarin, a nerve agent that can cause loss of consciousness, paralysis and death, South Korean news reports said.
An unidentified South Korean company sold around 338 tons of sodium cyanide to a Thai company in February 2002, Chosun said. The unidentified Thai firm then arranged to ship 70 tons of the chemical to North Korea.
South Korea eventually persuaded the Thai government to intervene to stop the shipment, Chosun and other South Korean news reports said.
Although it was unclear why the North wanted the chemical, the communist country does have a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, in addition to its nuclear weapons programs, according to US and South Korean officials.
Meanwhile, South Korea reiterated today that it will never develop nuclear weapons, as the UN atomic watchdog agency was set to begin a field inspection on the country's secret nuclear experiments.
South Korea recently acknowledged that its scientists had once dabbled in extracting plutonium and enriching uranium - both of which can be used to make nuclear arms. But the country has denied any weapons ambitions.
"We declare again that we have no intention of developing or possessing nuclear weapons," Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said after a meeting of the National Security Council. "And we have never promoted a nuclear development for military purposes."
----
N.Korea Vows Will Never Dismantle Its Nuclear Arms
September 18, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-korea.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea will never dismantle its nuclear arsenal and will not resume talks on its atomic programs unless the United States drops its ``hostile'' policy, the North's official KCNA news agency said on Saturday.
In a rare commentary that carries considerable weight, KCNA said disclosures about unsanctioned nuclear experiments in South Korea in 2000 and 1982 showed Washington applied double standards, criticizing the North but understanding the South.
``It is self-evident that the resumption of the talks can no longer be discussed unless the U.S. drops its hostile policy based on double standards toward the DPRK and that the latter can never dismantle its nuclear deterrent force,'' said KCNA.
The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
A commentary from KCNA carries an official imprimatur but also allows Pyongyang the ambiguity to offer a different interpretation through diplomatic channels.
The United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have been seeking at so far fruitless six-party talks to persuade North Korea to give up its atomic ambitions completely in exchange for security guarantees and energy aid.
North Korea has rejected Washington's demand for complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of its projects.
``What infuriates the DPRK is that the U.S. has so far shut its eyes to the secret nuclear activities of its allies under its nuclear umbrella but has pressurized the DPRK to accept the CVID,'' said KCNA.
``This means that the six countries having either access to nuclear weapons or perfect capability to develop them sat at the negotiating table to discuss the DPRK's nuclear issue only.''
It said the South's test underscored U.S. double standards.
SOUTH HAS NO NUCLEAR PLANS
``The U.S. transfers nuclear technology to its allies and connives at their development and access to nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, it makes far-fetched assertion without any convincing evidence that the DPRK has pursued clandestine uranium enrichment,'' it said.
The North Korea nuclear crisis began in October 2002 when Washington said the North had said it had an enrichment program. Pyongyang has subsequently denied saying this.
Earlier on Saturday in Seoul, South Korea declared it had no plans to develop or possess nuclear weapons, but said it would pursue scientific atomic research transparently in cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
South Korea would make diplomatic efforts to allay international concerns about past nuclear experiments and try to prevent unauthorized plutonium and uranium tests from being referred to the U.N. Security Council, ministers said.
The government held a National Security Council meeting on Saturday after the governing member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency noted ``serious concern'' expressed by the U.N. agency's head and deferred until November judgment on South Korea's previously undisclosed tests.
South Korea recently said scientists enriched a small amount of uranium in 2000 and separated plutonium in 1982 without government knowledge or approval. Diplomats have said some of the uranium was close to the purity needed for an atom bomb. Plutonium can also be used in a bomb.
Seoul says the enrichment was conducted by ambitious scientists unaware of the political implications of their action. But the news has complicated tortuous attempts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea said on Thursday South Korea's past atomic experiments had to be fully explained before the North would join a new round of six-party talks with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. Saturday's KCNA commentary applied another torque of pressure.
--------
South Korea Says It Won't Develop Nukes
September 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SKorea-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea insisted Saturday it will never develop nuclear weapons, but North Korea ruled out dismantling its weapons program or resuming negotiations unless U.S. drops its policy of ``double standards'' on the two countries' activities.
North Korea has seized on a recent South Korea acknowledgment of a plutonium-based nuclear experiment years ago, linking it with its own nuclear efforts and a tough stand in six-nation negotiations the United States is pushing to get North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program.
Seoul's revelations threatened to disrupt already troubled efforts to persuade Pyongyang to end its nuclear efforts.
``We declare again that we have no intention of developing or possessing nuclear weapons,'' South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Saturday. ``And we have never promoted a nuclear development for military purposes.''
But in a statement on its official news agency, KCNA, North Korea said the United States was ignoring the nuclear activities of its allies while trying to pressure the North to give up its nuclear capability.
It said the South intended to develop weapons with U.S. connivance.
``The continued disclosure of experiments in south Korea clearly proves that they were directed by the U.S. as they are aimed to develop nuclear weapons,'' KCNA said. ``South Korea's clandestine nuclear experiments go to prove that the U.S. double standards are a fundamental factor of the nuclear proliferation.''
``It is self-evident that the resumption of the talks can no longer be discussed unless the U.S. drops its hostile policy based on double standards toward (North Korea) and that the latter can never dismantle its nuclear deterrent force,'' KCNA said.
On Thursday, North Korea said it would not attend planned six-party talks on its nuclear activities until South Korea fully discloses the details of its secret atomic experiments.
South Korea acknowledged this month that it extracted a minute amount of plutonium in an experiment more than 20 years ago. That admission came shortly after it said it conducted a uranium-enrichment experiment four years ago. Plutonium and enriched uranium are two key ingredients of nuclear weapons.
South Korea said the experiments 20 years ago were purely scientific research, but acknowledged it should have revealed details to the U.N. nuclear agency.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave South Korea high marks for cooperating with his probe of the experiments. A team of IAEA inspectors is headed to Seoul to collect material for a report for the agency's board of governors when it next meets in November. They were to arrive Sunday.
-------- mideast
An End to Ambiguity:
US Counter-Proliferation from Tel Aviv to Tehran
by Grant F. Smith
September 18, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=3602
Iran's Nuclear Program
In 2002 Iran announced plans to build six nuclear power stations. As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran can buy and operate centrifuges and other equipment needed for enriching uranium as long as it only uses the devices for nuclear power. NPT rules require that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) be allowed into Iranian labs for verification purposes. Although the IAEA indicated on Sept. 13, 2004 that officials were being allowed access to Iranian nuclear facilities, aspects of Iran's uranium enrichment efforts remain unclear.
Particles of weapons grade enriched uranium were detected in Iran during IAEA inspections. Iran claimed contamination was present on imported equipment. According to Jane's Defence Weekly, IAEA inspectors reached a tentative conclusion that equipment smuggled through the network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan arrived in Iran contaminated from previous enrichment. Other analysts believe the traces are damning evidence of a clandestine Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Whether or not Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons, American interests are best served if all nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is reversed. Unfortunately, recent U.S. policies have only created conditions in which nuclear weapon acquisition is seen as a means of survival for countries on the neoconservative policy "target list."
From the Iranian perspective, Israel has not only successfully developed its own arsenal of nuclear weapons under a policy of "strategic ambiguity," it has also shaped U.S. policy through American neoconservatives with ties to the Israeli Likud party. American citizens must demand an effective counter-proliferation strategy toward Tehran that first eliminates the policy of "strategic ambiguity" operating in Tel Aviv and Washington.
Balancing Against the Nuclear Hegemon
In the Middle East, there is only one known nuclear power. Israel has successfully maintained a policy of "strategic ambiguity," neither admitting nor denying possession of nuclear weapons. This has allowed Israel to skirt NPT and U.S. trade sanctions such as the Symington Amendment. Though estimates of the Israeli arsenal vary widely, depending upon the source, strategic ambiguity has helped transform Israel into the region's only nuclear power. (See Exhibit #1).
Exhibit 1: Estimates of the Israeli Nuclear Arsenal (Source: USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air War College citations)
Year Estimates from Various Sources
1967 13 bombs
1969 5-6 bombs of 19 Kilotons yield
1973 13 bombs. 20 nuclear missiles and development of a "suitcase bomb"
1974 3 nuclear capable artillery battalions each with 12 175mm tubes and total of 108 warheads. 10 bombs
1976 10-20 nuclear weapons
1980 200 bombs
1984 12-31 atomic bombs, 31 plutonium bombs and 10 uranium bombs
1985 At least 100 nuclear bombs
1986 100-200 fission bombs and a number of fusion bombs
1991 50-60 to 200-300
1992 Greater than 200 bombs
1994 64-112 bombs @ 5 kg/warhead; 70-80 weapons "A complete repertoire" (neutron bombs, nuclear mines, suitcase bombs, submarine borne)
1996 60-80 Plutonium weapons, maybe >100 assembles, ER variants, variable yields. Possibly 200-300. 50-90 plutonium weapons, could have well over 135. 50-100 Jericho I and 30-50 Jericho II missiles.
1997 Greater than 400 deliverable thermonuclear and nuclear weapons
Unfortunately, Israel's acquisition of an arsenal of tactical and strategic weapons and ability to directly and indirectly create "facts on the ground" in the region is now both the model and primary motivation for other state actors.
According Adam Shapiro, Israel 's achievements make future regional re-balancing inevitable:
"In the same way that Israel is promoting itself as a regional hegemon, as a regional superpower, it is getting to the point where other countries will seek to ally against Israel. And it should be noted that there is no alliance in the current formulation. Egypt, Jordan, if they are aligned with anyone, it is the United States. They are large recipients of American aid money and American military dollars. As such, they pose no threat whatsoever to Israel." (November 26, 2003 IRmep Capitol Hill forum)
However, Iran can legitimately assume that after Iraq, it is next in line on the Israeli (and therefore American) list of targets for military intervention. It need read no further than the U.S. National Security Strategy and key neoconservative policy documents. (See Exhibit #2).
Exhibit 2 Policies Developed and Implemented by Neoconservative Ideologues (Source: IASPS, PNAC, NSC)
Year| Policy| Defining Policy Document| Neoconservative Ideologues
1996| Invade Iraq | A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm - Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies | Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm
2000| Iran as a "Threat to US Interests in the Gulf," Necessity for maintaining "forward bases in the Region" | Rebuilding America's Defenses -Project for the New American Century| William Kristol, Robert Kagan, John Bolton http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
2002| Freeze "nuclear club" membership, "preemptive attacks" against transgressors | The National Security Strategy - National Security Council| Paul Wolfowitz http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
The past eight years of American actions have taught regional observers, including Iran, three significant lessons:
1. Opaque nuclear capability development and ambiguity can allow a small power to suddenly and securely enter the nuclear club;
2. Nascent nuclear states such as North Korea can deter attack from even the United States with only limited numbers of nuclear weapons;
3. A little understood extension of "Strategic Ambiguity" into the US allows Israeli lobbies and ideologues to successfully direct US military policy in the Middle East against threats to Israeli interests while plausibly denying it and claiming Israel's enemies are, in fact, America's own.
From the Iranian government's perspective, right-wing Likud policies targeting Iran make achieving its own arsenal of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons as quickly as possible an urgent matter of survival. From an American standpoint, the U.S. cannot engage or even credibly threaten Tehran with international isolation unless America first tackles "strategic ambiguity" in Tel Aviv and Washington. Lifting the rhetorical smoke of "strategic ambiguity" reveals the vast differences between U.S. and Israeli policy objectives in the region. (See Exhibit #3).
Exhibit 3 State Regional Policy Objectives and Challenges (Source: IRmep 2004)
Iran
Policy Objectives
1. Maintain sovereignty, territorial contiguity.
2. Deter, repel, or respond to foreign aggressors.
Impediments/Challengers
1. U.S. military presence on two fronts.
2. Lack of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.
Israel
Policy Objectives
1. Extend nuclear hegemony in the region
2. Maintain benefits of "strategic ambiguity"
3. Defeat perceived rivals without appearing to do so.
Impediments/Challengers
1. Nuclear club entrants.
2. International scrutiny, growing international pressure.
3. Deteriorating "cover" for neoconservative policy implementation by the U.S.
United States
Policy Objectives
1. Secure global access to petroleum and natural gas reserves.
2. Continuous petroleum and natural gas production.
3. Elimination of WMD and forces driving proliferation in the region.
Impediments/Challengers
1. Widespread conflict driven by religious extremism.
2. Terror attacks against energy production infrastructure.
3. Inability to negotiate, form international coalitions or be perceived as an "honest broker" in the region.
America's first step toward defusing regional proliferation is dispersing the fog of "strategic ambiguity." If Israeli nuclear weapons and regional policies are the major catalyst of demand for weapons of mass destruction by other regional actors, Israel's operatives in the United States are clearly the fixative. Recent allegations about sensitive, classified documents on U.S. policy toward Iran making their way from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office to AIPAC, and then on to Israel, are only the most recent incident causing Americans to believe that Israeli-linked officials are compromising American interests. To date, Perle, Feith, and Wolfowitz, among other neoconservatives, have operated under an inky cloud of "strategic ambiguity" from which they claim efforts on behalf of Israel are in fact truly for America.
It is now time for America to "clean house" of the entire lot of compromised neoconservative advisors in order to assure both the American people and international community that U.S. actions in the region are a legitimate reflection of true American interests, rather than extensions of Israeli policy. America can no longer function or exert influence in the region unless it regains status as an "honest broker." Future policy in the region, including potential military actions, will suffer growing skepticism from American citizens now becoming aware of the curious and unpalatable linkages key administration advisors have to Israel.
Recommendations: Defusing a Nuclear Middle East
America's principle interest is to defuse all Middle East nuclear proliferation. Even the most limited use of tactical or nuclear weapons in the petroleum rich Middle East by any party could throw the world into an unending economic depression. To avert nascent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, the U.S. must:
1. Demand a Public Nuclear Audit from Tel Aviv Unless Congress drops decades of complicity obscuring Israeli nuclear arms policy, it will never understand or constructively deal with the prime motivation for other regional states to acquire nuclear weapons. Congress must immediately recognize that Israel is a nuclear power and pressure it to join the NPT. An immediate IAEA audit of Israeli weapons and targeting data must commence.
2. Regional Disarmament Treaty U.S. interests are best served by a fully denuclearized Middle East. Neither perceived friends nor enemies should be allowed to maintain or further develop nuclear weapons. Toward this end, the U.S. should apply pressure on Israel to dismantle its nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction under multinational observation. Other states can be legitimately pressured or forced to halt development programs if a verifiable regional treaty that also oversees the removal of Israel's arsenal is in effect.
3. Regional Policies Must be "Made in the USA" U.S. advisors and policy makers lose credibility and effectiveness if they are perceived to function under Israeli influence. The administration should strive to purge "ambiguous" advisors and install competent appointees that can credibly represent U.S. interests under the following criteria:
- Appointees have not entered contractual, advisory, or other business relationships with governments of the region;
- Appointees have no compromising regional ideological or religious affiliations that cloud or influence their decision making;
- Appointees are competent, regionally knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with governments across the entire Middle East.
This may require that the administration pass over braying legions of think tank pundits and lobbyists to once again reach for proven figures in business and academic circles. By returning to the traditional American custom of hiring advisors and appointees who agree to serve at some sacrifice to other interests, America can again harness the energy of motivated and uncompromised patriots. Improving the quality of American advisors and appointees is critical for confronting the true proliferation dynamics of the region. Ending "strategic ambiguity" and returning to the pursuit of American regional interests is the first step.
-------- terrorism
The Threat of Loose Nukes Is One of Our Own Making
Saturday, September 18, 2004
By Bruce Blair
The Washington Post
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?Category=14&ID=182887&r=1
Nuclear terrorism, thankfully, is still only a specter, not a reality. But the recent wave of bloodshed in Russia underscores the urgency of the need to prevent terrorists capable of indiscriminate slaughter from acquiring nuclear bombs.
To its credit, the Bush administration has finally launched an ambitious initiative to better secure nuclear and radiological materials, particularly in violence-racked Russia. But unless the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, introduced in May, becomes part of a far more comprehensive approach to nuclear theft and terrorism, it will fall well short of its goal of safeguarding the American people.
The initiative builds on the bilateral nonproliferation efforts of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a U.S. government-funded, post-Cold War effort that focused on securing Russia's nuclear arsenal. The new, expanded cooperative effort seeks to collect weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium from dozens of additional countries, and to lock them down in secure facilities.
But with U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces still on hair-trigger alert, we must recognize that present policies for reducing the risk of nuclear strikes against the United States by terrorists or rogue countries are inconsistent and self-defeating. On the one hand, in the name of deterrence, U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces both comply with their presidents' instructions to be constantly prepared to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other at a moment's notice. On the other hand, in the name of nonproliferation, the United States and Russia cooperate closely in securing Russia's nuclear weapons against theft.
By keeping thousands of nuclear weapons poised for immediate launch, even under normal peacetime circumstances, the United States projects a powerful deterrent threat at Russia. But at the same time, it causes Russia to retain thousands of weapons in its operational inventory, scattered across that country's vast territory, and to keep them ready for rapid use in large-scale nuclear war with America. To maintain the reliability of these far-flung weapons, Russia must constantly transport large numbers back and forth between a remanufacturing facility and the dispersed military bases. This creates a serious vulnerability: Transportation is the Achilles' heel of nuclear weapons security.
On any given day, many hundreds of Russian nuclear weapons are moving around the countryside; nearly 1,000 are in some stage of transit or temporary storage awaiting relocation. This constant movement between the far-flung nuclear bases and the remanufacturing facility at Ozersk in the southern Urals stems from the esoteric technical fact that Russian nuclear bombs are highly perishable. American bombs have a shelf life of more than 30 years, but Russian bombs last only eight to 12 years before corrosion and internal decay render them unreliable - prone to fizzling instead of exploding. At that point, they must be shipped back to the factory for remanufacturing. Every year many hundreds of bombs, perhaps as many as a thousand, roll out of Russia's Mayak factory. The United States turns out fewer than 10 annually. In Russia, transportation lines linking the factory to nuclear bases across 10 time zones provide fertile ground for terrorist interception.
Keeping a small strategic arsenal consolidated at limited locations near the Mayak factory would be the ideal. But the ongoing nuclear dynamic between the former Cold War foes creates the opposite environment, which undercuts security. Russian nuclear commanders are confronted with U.S. submarines lurking off their coasts with 10-minute missile-flight times to Moscow and thousands of launch-ready U.S. warheads on land- and sea-based missiles aimed at thousands of targets in Russia. They are compelled to match the American posture in numbers, alert status and geographic dispersal.
U.S. leaders must decide which goal takes precedence: sustaining the Cold War legacy of massive arsenals to deter a massive surprise nuclear attack, or shoring up the security of Russian nuclear weapons to prevent terrorists from grabbing them (or corrupt guards from selling them).
And terrorists grabbing such a weapon as it shuttles between deployment fields and factories is not the worst-case scenario stemming from this nuclear gamesmanship. The theft of a nuclear bomb could spell eventual disaster for an American city, but the seizure of a ready-to-fire strategic long-range nuclear missile or group of missiles capable of delivering such bombs to targets thousands of miles away could be apocalyptic for entire nations.
If scores of armed Chechen rebels can slip into the heart of Moscow and hold a packed theater hostage for days, as they did in 2002, might it not be possible for terrorists to infiltrate missile fields in rural Russia, seize control of a nuclear-armed mobile rocket roaming the countryside, and launch it at Europe or America? It's an open question that warrants candid bilateral discussion, especially since the 9/11 Commission report revealed that al-Qaida plotters considered this very idea.
Another specter concerns terrorists "spoofing" radar or satellite sensors, or cyber-terrorists hacking into early warning networks. By either firing short-range missiles that fool warning sensors into reporting an attack by longer-range missiles, or feeding false data into warning computer networks, could sophisticated terrorists generate false indications of an enemy attack that results in a mistaken launch of nuclear rockets in "retaliation?" False alarms have been frequent enough on both sides under the best of conditions. False warning poses an acute danger as long as Russian and U.S. nuclear commanders are given, as they still are today, only several pressure-packed minutes to determine whether an enemy attack is underway and to decide whether to retaliate. Russia's deteriorating early-warning network, coupled with terrorist plotting against it, only heightens the dangers.
Russia is not the only crucible of risk. The early-warning and control problems plaguing Pakistan, India and other nuclear proliferators are even more acute. As these nations move toward hair-trigger stances for their nuclear missiles, the terrorist threat to them will grow in parallel.
Even the U.S. nuclear control apparatus is far from foolproof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery: Terrorist hackers might be able to gain backdoor electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically of radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject certain types of firing orders that previously would have been carried out immediately.
Both countries are running such terrorist risks for the sake of an obsolete deterrent strategy. The notion that either the United States or Russia would deliberately attack the other with nuclear weapons is ludicrous, while the danger that terrorists are plotting to get their hands on these arsenals is real. We need to kick our old habits and stand down our hair-trigger forces. Taking U.S. and Russian missiles off alert would automatically reduce, if not remove, the biggest terrorist threats that stem from keeping thousands of U.S. and Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles fueled, targeted and waiting for a couple of computer signals to fire. They would fly the instant they received these signals, which can be sent with a few keystrokes on a launch console.
We ought to reverse our priorities for nuclear security. The United States should not be spending 25 times more on its deterrent posture than it spends on all of our nonproliferation assistance to Russia and other countries to help them keep their nuclear bombs and materials from falling into terrorist hands. Both the United States and Russia should be spending more on de-alerting, dismantling and securing our arsenals than on prepping them for a large-scale nuclear war with each other.
The current deterrent practices of the two nuclear superpowers are not only anachronistic, they are thwarting our ability to protect ourselves against the real threats.
Blair, a former Minuteman launch officer, is president of the
Washington-based Center for Defense Information
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maine
Dynamite fells dome
By CAROLYN LORIÉ
Brattleboro Reformer Staff
Saturday, September 18, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~2410261,00.html
WISCASSET, Maine -- Watching 1,100 pounds of dynamite ripping through and collapsing 20,000 million pounds of concrete and steel felt a lot like standing too close to a parade as the drums go by.
Multiplied by a thousand.
As the dynamite ignited, a momentary flash raced up the pillars holding up the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant containment dome. Within a fraction of a second, smoke billowed out the open spaces between the columns. Then they disappeared as the dome crashed down.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the mighty bang and reverberation the 200 or so spectators who gathered to watch the dome drop, cheered heartily.
Within minutes, pneumatic hammers, also known as hoe rams, began pulverizing the massive cap.
Soon it will all be gone.
"It was sort of bittersweet," said Tedd Feigenbaum, president of the plant, after it was all over. "It really marks the end of Maine Yankee as a nuclear power plant, but it went off safely."
Before being decommissioned in 1997, 11 years before its license was to expire, Maine Yankee produced almost 25 percent of the electricity used in the state. It was one of the oldest plants in the country, having come on line in 1972, four years after construction started. Costing $231 million, the plant was licensed to operate until 2008.
But it didn't.
Depending on who you ask, the plant was a smooth-running, well-oiled machine that shut down because of financial constraints and anti-nuclear zealotry. Or it was a disaster of a place, posing the threat of an even bigger disaster.
"It was a good plant to start with," said Adolph Bannister of Connecticut, who helped engineer the decommissioning plan. "It was a good running plant. It was just public opinion that kept it from being uprated."
This was not a sentiment that Linda Spaulding of Freeport agreed with.
"The farther [away] it is, the better," said Spaulding, whose son worked at the plant during the decommissioning phase.
People in the area first began protesting the plant in earnest in 1979, after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown.
Thousands marched from Wiscasset to the statehouse in Augusta that year, carrying with them a petition calling for a statewide referendum on plant. It asked if the citizens of Maine wanted to phase out electrical generation by means of nuclear fission. In other words, should the only nuclear power plant in the state be shut down?
In 1980, only a third of the Wisacasset residents voted yes, as the plant coughed up 96 percent of the town's taxes every year. Across the state, 41.9 percent of the voters approved. Mainers were divided over the issue.
But whatever rancor the debate once stirred, seven years after the question was finally settled it all seems to have, if not dissipated, at least lost its fervor.
The crowd gathered about 1,000 feet from the dome on Friday morning had all the tension of an audience waiting for a fireworks display. There was a sense of excitement hanging in the air, despite the fact that plenty of the spectators were industry people, even former employees of the plant.
There were also a number of key players from the anti-nuclear movement, including Ray Shadis of the New England Coalition. Shadis has lived in Wiscasset for more than 30 years.
While there was no one selling kitsch at the event, had there been, it would not have seemed out of place. There were children playing with Matchbox cars in the sand, babies propped on their mothers' knees and plenty of chatter and laughter.
"It's like a family reunion," joked a man wearing a Maine Yankee personnel badge, as he shook hands with another man.
A lot of the spectators were family members of Manafort Brothers employees. The company has been in charge of the decommissioning process.
"My husband talked about it all the time," said Annette Martin of Norway. "I've never seen it up close and I wanted to see the big boom."
Prior to the big boom, 13 million pounds of concrete and steel were cut from the walls of the containment building to create the columns. While the dome is 212 feet thick, the walls were almost twice that. Holes were drilled into the sides of the columns, where the explosives were placed to bring down the 150-feet high dome.
Though the fabric and chain link fence enveloping the pillars kept debris from flying around, the collapse spewed fourth a miasma of dust.
Soon afterward, a fine mist wafted over to the crowd. It settled on people's hair and cameras and children. It was inhaled as folks chatted, where it left a gritty chalk-like sensation in the mouth. No one seemed especially concerned.
An information sheet given out by Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes stated that plant officials expected that the dust would not be contaminated. They nonetheless planned to monitor for radiological release.
According to Howes, the building had to be blasted in order to bring the dome down to where the hammers could reach it. Torches will be used to cut the interior steel liner, which is 38-12 inches thick.
Once the hoe rams finish demolishing the dome, the 20,000 million pounds will be loaded onto railroad cars and shipped off to a low-level waste dump in Utah. The project should be wrapped up by early spring.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not release the plant's license, however, until it inspects the reactor site and determines that it has been cleaned to its standards, explained Feigenbaum.
Four hundred and thirty of the company's 700 acres have already been sold to a private development company based in Greenwich, Conn. Another 200 acres will be donated to the Chewonki Organization for conservation and environmental education.
Approximately 10 to 15 acres, however, will remain under the control of Maine Yankee indefinitely. That is the space holding the 60 dry cask storage units, which are holding 24 fuel rod assemblies each.
Until the federal repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., takes in every last one of the more than 1,400 assemblies, Maine Yankee must keep the area under the watch of security guards 24 hours a day. After years of delay, Yucca is slated to begin receive shipments by 2010. Many consider that date to be overly optimistic. Many doubt that the site will open at all.
But there was little attention focused on the casks on Friday morning, though the crowd stood just yards from them.
All eyes were on the dome and all thoughts seemingly caught up in what its destruction signified.
For the company, it was the culmination of good planning and hard work. Maine Yankee was decommissioned on schedule and within the set budget.
"It was a very successful project," said Howes.
For others, it marked the end of a long a career. Like Feigenbaum, Mike Everingham of Topsham found the experience "bittersweet." He has worked at the plant for 25 years.
"Having the plant shut down seven years ago was disappointing but for those of us who stayed around to decommission it, it's almost the end of a job well done," he said.
Everingham expects to be laid off permanently in the spring. He will not work again, but will instead start his retirement by taking off in his camper with his wife Peggy.
By 11 a.m., one hour after the big event, most of the crowd had dispersed and the cloud of dust dissipated.
After giving numerous interviews to television and newspaper reporters, Ray Shadis was one of the last to leave. Though he was instrumental in closing the plant down, the day was little more than the icing on the cake for a battle won seven years ago.
"I'm glad that it's over with," said Shadis, as he walked away from the rubble.
Carolyn Lorié can be reached at clorie@reformer.com.
-------- new mexico
LANL to move nuke materials from canyon
Associated Press
September 18, 2004
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/4428.html
Los Alamos National Laboratory plans within a year to remove all weapons-grade nuclear material from a canyon area within the laboratory that has raised concerns about security, according to an internal federal document.
The document from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which was obtained by the government watchdog group Project On Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., said the highly enriched uranium and plutonium would be moved to a facility at the Nevada Test Site starting this month.
The materials would be moved out of the canyon by September 2005, the document says.
Pete Stockton, a senior investigator for POGO, characterized the document -- dated Aug. 20 -- as a draft that outlines steps to coordinate the move of the nuclear materials and the work associated with them from Technical Area 18.
Built in the 1940s, TA-18 is located at the bottom of a steep canyon, making it difficult to defend from attackers approaching on the canyon's rim.
Stockton recalled an October 2000 security exercise in which attackers could have detonated a bomb inside TA-18 that would have destroyed part of New Mexico. "The material is just sitting out there for the taking," he said.
But lab officials have said the material is secure. "The material is safe where it is, and we have demonstrated our ability" to protect it, lab Director Pete Nanos said in an April interview with The Associated Press.
But, Nanos said, the costs of maintaining security at the site are high, and keeping the materials there is not cost effective.
It is the first time NNSA has committed to moving all the weapons-grade material from the area of the lab by a certain date, Stockton said. "We're still cautiously optimistic that this will happen," he said. "The problem is, we've heard these things before, and the proof is in the move."
In a sarcastic response, Bryan Wilkes, an NNSA spokesman, said POGO might be trying to save face. "POGO's been saying that we are not going to move this material. Now they're saying we are going to move it," he said. "I'm glad they're seeing the error of their past comments."
Wilkes would not confirm the authenticity of the internal federal document, which is labeled "Pre-Decisional/Official Use Only."
All along, NNSA has committed to the shut down, he said.
The agency hasn't publicized timelines, and maybe never will, because the government doesn't want people to know when the weapons-grade nuclear materials is being taken out, he said.
In March, the agency publicized a rough timeline for the project, Wilkes noted.
At the time, NNSA said it would start shipping the first 50 percent of the TA-18 special nuclear materials to Nevada in September, and the campaign would last approximately 18 months.
But Stockton said what he read in the internal federal document is the first he's seen of NNSA's commitment to getting all of it out of TA-18.
Lab spokeswoman Nancy Ambrosiano said workers have been moving nuclear materials out of TA-18 in preparation for the final move.
"The laboratory is actively supporting NNSA in this closure plan," she said.
Lab employees in TA-18 study nuclear materials to see how they will react in certain situations, they train Nuclear Emergency Search Teams and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and they support nonproliferation efforts, among other tasks, she said.
She said no lab employees have been moved from the site yet.
According to the document, some of the nuclear materials will be temporarily stored at Technical Area-55 in Los Alamos until they can shipped to Nevada.
All the nuclear materials will be shipped to their final locations by March 2008, the document said.
Stockton, a former special security assistant to former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, said POGO is "somewhat concerned" about the nuclear materials being stored in TA-55, a part of the lab where plutonium is processed.
But, he said, "it certainly is a good deal better than TA-18."
The NNSA document says the move will save the lab more than $100 million in future safeguards and security costs. Nanos said in April that a timeline hasn't been established, but moving the materials "could start relatively quickly."
Gov. Bill Richardson expressed pleasure the job will get done at last. "He has advocated this as energy secretary and governor, and he initiated the original plan for closure," said Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks.
Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico gave the draft plan mixed reviews. "It's good news and bad news," he said.
Tons of natural and depleted uranium, and thorium, are not addressed. "They still have a yet larger inventory of these materials that will continue to sit in the flood plain," he said.
Coghlan also worries the lab will move some of the dangerous criticality experiments from TA-18 to TA-55, without resolving the safety gaps that a federal oversight agency has identified at the plutonium facility.
If such experiments are moved to that location, it won't be soon, lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said. "It's something that has been talked about, but there's nothing planned at this point," he said.
Also, before the lab shut down normal operations this summer, TA-55 was two months away from resolving all safety issues, Danneskiold said.
Staff writer Diana Heil contributed to this story.
On the Net: http://www.pogo.org/p/x/2004nuclearweapons.html
-------- new york
Operator of Nuclear Plant Readying Strike Substitutes
September 18, 2004
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/nyregion/18nuclear.html
WHITE PLAINS, Sept. 17 - The operator of the Indian Point nuclear power plant is training a replacement force to take over security should the regular guards go on strike when their contract expires on Oct. 2, officials said this week.
Critics of the plant, however, said they doubted that a team of recruits could be prepared in time to protect the plant against attacks or intrusions.
"When you're talking about nuclear security going to a scab force, it's simply unacceptable," said Alex Matthiessen, the executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group that has sought to shut down Indian Point's two reactors. "You're not talking about a bunch of Wal-Marts. You can't be fooling around with the quality of the guards."
Spokesmen for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the plant's operator, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which began training the replacement guards in August, said that the replacement force would be prepared to operate at federally mandated levels of proficiency on a par with the regular force.
"They will be required to carry out the security programs to the same degree as the current security force and will be required to execute to the ability of the current security force," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the commission, which oversees the nuclear industry. He said he was unable to find any record of a strike of security guards at a nuclear power plant in the United States.
An official of Teamsters Local 456, which represents the plant's security workers, said the regular force numbered about 150. Officials from Entergy and the commission declined to reveal the size of the replacement force.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said, "It wouldn't be a one-to-one replacement, but it would clearly be a replacement that would meet our security obligations and our expectations and the regulatory requirements."
He said the substitutes were being provided by SOS Security Inc. of Parsippany, N.J.
The commission has been reviewing Indian Point's strike contingency plan, and four permanent on-site inspectors and the commission's security experts will continue to assess Entergy's strike preparations, Mr. Sheehan said. "The expectations are that they will conform with all our requirements," he said.
In the event of a walkout, he said, plant managers would remain in their jobs and National Guard troops and state police officers stationed there would also remain on duty. The commission, he added, would continue to monitor security operations around the clock for several days after the strike begins and would thereafter conduct what he called "periodic checks" with an expanded crew of inspectors.
Critics of Indian Point questioned the ability of Entergy to assemble and prepare a sufficiently experienced replacement force by Oct. 2.
"Not to state the obvious here, but if you're a terrorist group interested in attacking a nuclear power plant, and they have the bench warmers - or worse - in there, that makes the plant a more vulnerable target," Mr. Matthiessen said.
Julie Edwards, a spokeswoman for Representative Nita M. Lowey, a Westchester Democrat whose district includes parts of the plant's evacuation zone, an area within a 10-mile radius of the plant, said the congresswoman "has long had concerns with the ongoing inability to maintain a work force and to operate the plant at the security level required at the facility.'' Ms. Edwards added that the information "only adds to her belief that this facility should be decommissioned."
Mr. Steets, however, said that a replacement force would be adequately prepared to guard the plant. "We would only have been concerned if we didn't have enough time to train them," he said. "There's enough time, and we've been doing it."
The contract of the plant's regular security force expires at midnight on Oct. 2. The union's membership overwhelmingly voted down a contract proposal earlier this month that would have extended the current contract by two years. John Cuite, the assistant trustee of Local 456 and a union negotiator, said negotiations were expected to resume next week.
Officials from the union and Entergy declined to discuss specifics of the latest contract offer, but Mr. Steets said that the union membership had blocked the proposal mainly because it was concerned about vesting and wanted a longer deal.
-------- vermont
State seeks 2nd opinion on VY uprate
By The Associated Press
Saturday, September 18, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,102%7E8860%7E2410262,00.html
MONTPELIER (AP) -- The Douglas administration asked another federal panel Friday to look into a safety concern related to Vermont Yankee's proposed power boost.
The Department of Public Service asked the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent branch of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to look at the issue.
Entergy Nuclear wants to boost by 20 percent the amount of power produced at the Vernon reactor. The state says it wants the advisory committee to review an issue involving pressure inside the reactor in the event of an accident.
Entergy has requested credit for containment overpressure to allow emergency core cooling pumps to operate in the event of an accident following the uprate. The state is questioning whether Entergy is maintaining a sufficient safety margin.
The Department of Public Service already has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself to hold a full hearing on the issue.
"Requesting the (advisory committee) to review the containment overpressure issue in addition to requesting a hearing on the issue is a second avenue to having our questions resolved," said Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien. "We want to make sure that Vermont Yankee is safe if an uprate of power output is allowed."
The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards is a group of 11 individuals with a wide variety of engineering expertise that provides independent reviews on the safety of nuclear power plants and the adequacy of proposed safety standards. It will review Entergy's uprate request.
The Department of Public Service has also asked the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to have one of its meetings regarding Vermont Yankee in the vicinity of the plant.
--------
State seeks new opinion on Yankee
September 18, 2004
By Susan Smallheer,
Rutland Herald Staff
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040918/NEWS/409180419/1003
The Douglas administration has asked a national nuclear advisory panel to review what the state considers the most controversial - and potentially dangerous - aspect of a plan to increase power production at Vermont Yankee.
In a letter to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, state Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien asked the committee to review Entergy's plans, specifically the plan to maintain pressure in the reactor's containment during an emergency.
"The department is questioning whether Entergy should be allowed to count on a certain amount of pressure in the reactor to allow emergency core cooling pumps to run, in the event of an accident," the Public Service Department said in a statement Friday afternoon.
O'Brien noted that the state had already lodged a challenge on the same issue when it requested a formal hearing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the containment-pressure issue three weeks ago. Vermont's congressional delegation has urged the NRC to hold such a hearing.
The NRC, which has never held such a hearing on power increase, is still considering the request, according to a spokesman.
O'Brien said that the state's nuclear engineer, William Sherman, had raised the same concerns last year. The NRC's response, which came six months later, failed to answer the state's concerns, he said.
"We're asking for an independent body of experts to look at this issue," O'Brien said Friday. "We want to highlight the overpressure issue."
He said the advisory committee was an independent body from the NRC staff. "I think they have some genuine influence," he said.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the advisory committee was already in line to review the uprate case as part of the "checks and balances" inherent in the NRC's uprate review process.
Sheehan, who hadn't read Vermont's request, said that if the state's request for a hearing is granted, the hearing will be held before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a division of the NRC.
Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the New England Coalition, a nuclear watchdog group, said the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards currently reviews all power uprates, and has never turned one down.
The New England Coalition has also asked for a formal hearing, but on different grounds.
"For the time being, they review all extended power uprates," Shadis said. "Back in 1999, they expressed grave reservations of granting uprates of more than 8 percent."
But since then, the committee has been involved in reviewing all the uprates and have given its approval on each one, including those that have included similar containment-pressure plans as Vermont Yankee.
Shadis said to call the group independent was misleading. The committee, made up of experts from around the country, relies on NRC staff for research.
"To say they are independent is a great deal of hokum," he said.
Entergy spokesman Robert Williams said the company has full confidence in its application to the NRC to generate an additional 20 percent, or 100 megawatts, of power.
"Our filing for an uprate is well grounded in NRC regulations, that have allowed containment-pressure credits at 25 other plants," Williams said.
"The ACRS was set up by Congress to give an independent view on safety matters and we welcome the oversight," he said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- washington
Hanford medical program draws protest
Saturday, September 18th, 2004
By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5567447p-5499625c.html
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell is preparing to block a nomination for Department of Energy assistant secretary to protest a new nationwide screening program for former nuclear workers.
The Washington Democrat plans to meet with former Hanford workers in Seattle on Sunday, then announce her plan to block the nomination of John Shaw unless he will support a better program for Hanford workers.
About 4,500 former Hanford workers have been screened for work-related medical problems under two programs that DOE will end this month. DOE plans to replace the local programs with the nationwide program to screen workers from all DOE sites doing nuclear weapons work.
DOE has announced the new program will be in place by October. Workers can call 1-888-580-1746 to get on a mailing list for the new program or leave a message if they have symptoms or concerns that need attention now.
But Cantwell's office Friday said the new national program is in limbo, leaving an estimated 3,000 former Hanford workers nowhere to go for health screenings. That number includes about 525 workers who have been turned down for screening as the local programs wind down.
She believes the new, less personalized program will offer fewer services and less assistance to workers at all DOE sites.
Cantwell is calling for the Hanford program for former production workers to be extended and expanded.
Hanford produced plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program for 50 years. Workers continue to be exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals during cleanup of the extensive contamination at the nuclear reservation.
Cantwell sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has scheduled Shaw's confirmation hearing on Tuesday. DOE has been without an assistant secretary for environmental health and safety since Beverly Cook resigned in April.
Cantwell's staff was encouraged by Shaw's interest in the worker screening issue at a preliminary meeting, Cantwell spokeswoman Charla Neuman said Friday.
The Hanford screening program for former production workers that ends this month has located 5,400 former workers interested in the exams. But it had been able to conduct only 1,865 exams by midsummer.
It found 38 percent of former production workers had breathing abnormalities, many of them apparently linked to asbestos or the metal beryllium, both of which were used at Hanford.
The program, led by Dr. Tim Takaro at the University of Washington, helped about 350 people win state worker compensation claims. That included 150 people with asbestos claims. The largest number of successful claims were for hearing loss.
Takaro said this summer that the program needed to be extended not only because of the many workers who had yet to be examined, but also because re-exams were finding that about 8 percent of the workers had developed work-related illnesses since their first exam. Lung damage from asbestos and beryllium may take years to develop.
The second program screened former construction workers. The Hanford Building Trades Medical Screening Program found 33 percent of former workers checked by midsummer had evidence of lung disease that could be related to dust or asbestos on the job. It was the first to document that construction workers were at risk of beryllium disease.
The program also detected 100 new cases of cancer in the 2,600 former construction workers screened by midsummer.
DOE referred questions on the new screening program to the White House, which did not return calls.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Huge cache of arms seized near Wana
Sultan says bodies of four foreign militants recovered
The News International
September 18, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2004-daily/18-09-2004/main/main3.htm
ISLAMABAD: Troops have recovered bodies of four foreign militants and also seized a large quantity of arms from a fortress-like house in the rugged tribal belt near the Afghan border, the military said Friday.
The suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants were killed Tuesday in a clash with security forces in Khanigurram area near Wana, the main town in the troubled South Waziristan region, military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said. "They were all foreigners," Sultan told AFP, without giving their nationalities. "Their bodies are with security forces" at a military post in the area, he added.
Sultan said troops engaged in siege and search operations in the area seized an arms dump from a house owned by a local cleric who claimed it was a madrassa (Islamic seminary) in Makin area, 60 kilometres north of Wana. "It was a mini-fort, with cellars, bunkers and everything." He said the building belonging to cleric Maulawi Shafiq was wrongly termed as a madrassa. "We have seized hundreds of rockets and Kalashnikov assault rifles," he said. "We wanted to show the compound to the local and foreign journalists, but unfortunately their helicopter was forced to return due to inclement weather." He said the fortress, targeted by security forces in Makin area, was being used as "miscreants' hideout."
Militants fired on security forces from the house on Tuesday and the troops targeted the house in retaliation, he said. Officials suspect a large number of al-Qaeda followers have taken refuge in the mountainous tribal belt after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001 when the Taliban were toppled. Around 150 foreign fighters have been killed in the tribal areas since October last year, according to military officials.
A roadside bomb explosion injured three soldiers, and militants fired rockets at a security forces base Friday, officials said. The "improvised explosive device" went off around midday near trucks carrying the troops in Kani Guram, a village in the South Waziristan tribal region, said Sultan. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion, which damaged one of the vehicles, Sultan said.
In Wana, militants fired two rockets at a base for army and paramilitary troops, but neither hit the facility and no one was injured in the attack, another army official said on condition of anonymity.
An intelligence official in the town said soldiers at the base retaliated with mortars and machine guns. It was not known if the attackers suffered any casualties. The official, who asked not to be named, said security forces defused another rocket near the base.
Also Friday, a man and his 4-year-old daughter were injured when a mortar round hit their home in Dhog village outside Wana. It was not clear who fired the round. Sultan said the operation in Wana and adjoining areas is only against terrorists and the security forces have cleared the Makin area of miscreants.
Briefing the newsmen on latest Wana situation, Sultan said huge arms cache including 400 rockets, scores of hand grenades and other ammunition was discovered from the vast house of Shafiq.
To a question about casualties in this action, he said, for now there are no confirmed reports of casualties, and if anybody had died, their bodies might have been taken along by the miscreants.
He said trenches, bunkers, underground channels and towers in the house were clearly meant for fighting purposes and claiming this house as a madrassa was a baseless assertion.
Sultan said neither Maulvi Shafiq was arrested nor there was any information of his death in the action. After clearing Kalusha, Shakai and surrounding areas, he said now the security forces have also cleared the Makin area.
He said majority of those killed in September 9 operation on training camp of terrorists in the Wana area were foreigners. Sultan explained that the security forces hit the training camp after getting detailed information from various sources like satellite images, reconnaissance and ground information.
"It was a precise and well focussed action and claims of certain quarters about killing of innocents people were baseless as there is no civil population in the surroundings," he said and added, "there was no question of killing the civilians."
He reiterated the offer of amnesty of the government to foreign extremists in Wana and adjoining areas to surrender themselves and register with the authorities. He said the government was keeping open both the channels; the action and the negotiation, and pointed out three possibilities to bring this operation to an end. He asked the militants, both local and foreigners to surrender, proposed to the local people to denounce unlawful activities and asked the foreigners to surrender and register themselves with the authorities.
About access to media to operation areas, the DG ISPR said, media was freely reporting the situation in WANA and there was no bar on their visiting this area. "Local reporters and stingers of foreign media organizations were freely reporting the happenings in Wana. They are only advised to avoid to go to the troubled areas due to security reasons," he stated. On insistence by the journalists, Shaukat said, "we can facilitate your visits to the area. And if you want to go there by yourselves, you can do so at your own risk." -Agencies
Our Peshawar correspondent adds: The government and Ahmadzai Wazir tribes of Wana have decided that the economic sanctions would be withdrawn against sub-tribes which would surrender their wanted persons.
A grand tribal jirga comprising 500 elders belonging to various sections of Ahmadzai Wazir tribe and its sub-tribes held discussions with NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah at Governor's House on Thursday night.
MNA Maulana Abdul Malik, Sahibzada Saeed Ahmad, secretary to governor, Brig (retd) Mahmood Shah, secretary security Fata, and Asmatullah Gandapur, political agent South Waziristan Agency, were also present, says a handout.
The governor had called in the Ahmadzai Wazir Jirga. Earlier agreements with the sub-tribes of Ahmadzai have provided guarantees of Rs 10 million, holding them responsible for the security of their respective areas.
The governor, addressing the jirga, said in accordance with the past agreements the tribes were bound to ensure peace in the area of their jurisdiction. Therefore, he added, there must neither be any rocket attack nor any bomb blast or mine explosion in future.
The governor said the government had no enmity with the tribesmen, rather it earnestly desired to remove backwardness of the tribal areas. However, he remarked the materialisation of this aspiration depended upon the restoration of peace in the area.
He assured the jirga that if Ahmadzai Wazirs fulfilled their pledges, the curbs would be lifted. Markets would be opened, transport allowed to ply and all the detained persons released if not found guilty.
The governor said had the tribesmen of Wana agreed to the government proposals and fulfilled their responsibilities at the very beginning, the current situation would have been avoided.
The tribal elders assured to implement the agreements and fulfill their responsibilities accordingly. The foreigners, they added, have since been pulled out, however the few other miscreants would also suffer for their evil deeds.
Meanwhile, a joint jirga of three sub-tribes of Mehsuds of Badar; Nazarkhel, Nano Khel and Shingi called on the NWFP governor on Friday and assured him of maintaining peaceful atmosphere in their respective areas besides extending every co-operation to the government in the ongoing situation.
-------- business
Halliburton Is a Handy Target for Democrats
Ties to Secret Deals, Cheney Keep Issue Alive
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30209-2004Sep17?language=printer
In the fall of 2002, a group of Pentagon advisers assessing the condition of Iraq's oil fields saw the need for a plan to repair damage from the impending war. The effort had to be secret, because the government had not publicly committed itself to fighting, and it had to be done by trustworthy experts.
The Energy Infrastructure Planning Group turned to a familiar resource: Halliburton Co., the global oil services company where Dick Cheney was chief executive until a couple of weeks after he was nominated for vice president.
It was a small project, worth $1.9 million to a company that brought in $12.6 billion in revenue that year. But it turned out to be the bridge to something much larger. Four months later, Pentagon officials granted Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., Halliburton's engineering and construction subsidiary, one of the contracting plums of the war: a classified no-bid deal worth up to $7 billion to do the restoration work.
Details about the genesis of those secret contracts have become part of an intensifying election-year effort by Democrats in Congress and the presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry to question whether Halliburton became one of the Defense Department's favorite contractors because Cheney is vice president.
No one has presented evidence that Cheney made as much as a phone call on behalf of his former company in the run-up to the war, or since. But Halliburton's repeated missteps and legal troubles, the surge in its government business, and apparent contradictions in statements by Cheney and other administration officials have kept the issue alive.
Political analysts said that many voters may have no idea what services Halliburton provides to the government but that they know Cheney once ran the company.
John J. Pitney Jr., a government professor at Claremont McKenna College who once served as a fellow in Cheney's congressional office, said Halliburton inflames administration critics.
"For people who disapprove of the administration, Halliburton provides a handle," he said. "It summons up images of corporate connections and Big Oil."
Kerry campaign officials said swing voters in the Southwest indicated in recent focus groups that questions about Halliburton and Cheney had become a "top of the mind" and "flashpoint" issue.
Yesterday, the Kerry campaign introduced a television ad suggesting a connection between deferred pay Cheney received from Halliburton and the contracts awarded in Iraq.
"As president, I will stop companies like Halliburton from profiting at the expense of our troops and taxpayers," Kerry said in a speech in Albuquerque. "I will stop companies from receiving no-bid contracts from the government when the president or vice president is still receiving compensation from that company."
There's no question that Halliburton has done well as a wartime contractor, providing food, fuel, housing and other troop support. Its logistical contract for work in Iraq, Kuwait and elsewhere, won in a competitive bid, is the largest of its kind, worth more than $5.6 billion through May, according to the Government Accountability Office. That contract was a major step in making Halliburton the largest contractor in Iraq.
The company also was paid more than $2.5 billion under the sole source contract it secured to reconstruct Iraqi oil fields -- before the government decided to hold a competitive bid. Halliburton's KBR won part of the second oil fields contract through a competitive bidding process, a share worth up to $1.2 billion more.
As a measure of Halliburton's growing relationship with the Pentagon, income from government projects rose last year from $320 million in the second quarter to more than $2 billion in the fourth quarter. In all, the company reported $4.2 billion in revenue from the U.S. government last year, or more than a quarter of the company's total. In 2002, Halliburton relied on the government for less than 10 percent of its sales.
As a result, Halliburton moved from No. 19 on the Army's list of its top 50 contractors in fiscal 2002 to No. 1 in 2003.
During its ascent as a contractor, the company became entangled in a variety of investigations. Government investigators and Defense Department auditors have accused KBR and its subcontractors of overcharging for fuel, food and other services in Iraq under its large contract for logistics support, called LogCAP. In response to audits that said Halliburton had not properly justified many bills, Army officials are weighing whether to withhold some payments on future claims.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, is investigating allegations of profiteering in the Balkans, from the time when Cheney was chief executive, as well as the company's business activities in Nigeria and Iran. And a Securities and Exchange Commission probe of a change in Halliburton's accounting practices under Cheney, which the SEC said enabled the company to inflate profit reports, ended in early August. The company paid a $7.5 million settlement, while one former executive paid a fine and another was sued.
Cheney declined requests for an interview for this story.
His successor at Halliburton, chief executive David J. Lesar, described the probes as a function of the company's size and the fact that Cheney led it from 1995 to 2000, not that it was engaged in profiteering or prone to shady dealings. "There's no company in corporate America today that is as scrutinized as Halliburton," Lesar said in an interview.
But statements by Cheney and others in the Bush administration have served to stoke criticism, especially from Democrats. "Every time we turned around, things we were told at the beginning weren't the full story," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who has led the questioning.
For example, Cheney said in a television interview last September that he was not involved in awarding contracts while he was secretary of Defense, had never lobbied the Pentagon while head of Halliburton and had severed all ties to the company since becoming vice president. The Kerry campaign features the interview in its new television ad. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years," Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Yet Cheney has reported on his financial disclosure statements that he continues to receive money from Halliburton. The payments are part of a deferred compensation contract that pays him for work he performed in 1999. It provides for five payments, the last one in January. Cheney reported receiving $147,579 in 2001, $162,392 in 2002, and $178,437 in 2003 in deferred salary.
Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems said the amount of the deferred pay is unaffected by any Halliburton business because Cheney had purchased an insurance contract that guarantees he will receive the full amount owed.
Cheney also had options to buy more than 400,000 shares of the company stock, according to financial disclosure records filed in May 2003. Cheney said he has committed to donate to charities any proceeds from the sale of that stock and cannot personally benefit in any way from the holdings.
Though not mentioned in the Kerry ad, Cheney added in the same television interview last year, "As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government."
Details about the activities of the Energy Infrastructure Planning Group, which helped the Pentagon prepare for the war, do not provide a direct link to Cheney. The Army Corps of Engineers chief counsel has said Halliburton's first secret Iraq contract "was done by career civil servants." But details unearthed about the workings of that planning group showed that at least two political appointees, not just career civil servants, were involved.
The head of the group, Michael H. Mobbs, was a senior political appointee. Mobbs played a decisive role in granting the first oil field work to KBR in November 2002, and again just before the war began in the spring of 2003, according to statements he made to lawmakers in a closed-door meeting in June.
Mobbs said at that meeting, according to a summary released by Waxman that hasn't been challenged, that he chose KBR over two other companies because it was already working with Army war planners, an apparent reference to the company's existing LogCAP contract. In doing so, Mobbs, backed by other department officials, overruled objections from a career Army attorney who argued the new work was not "within the scope" of that contract, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The GAO agreed the initial contract didn't fit under LogCAP.
Mobbs acknowledged in a memo that the $1.9 million task order would uniquely position KBR to win the far larger sole-source contract to actually do the restoration work to Iraqi oil fields, GAO investigator William T. Woods said at a recent House oversight hearing.
Mobbs also described his intention to use KBR at an October 2002 meeting of the Deputies Committee, made up of senior officials from the White House and other agencies, including Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Mobbs said he did so to ensure the officials had no objections to his plans to use KBR, according to Waxman's summary of the congressional briefing.
Mobbs declined several requests for an interview.
Libby declared after that meeting that he would not tell Cheney anything about the decision to use KBR and didn't, according to Cheney spokesman Kellems and another official who attended the meeting.
Kellems said Cheney has never been told about any decisions about contracts for Halliburton or other companies.
"Vice presidents don't do contracting," Kellems said. "Some Democrats have alleged that somehow the vice president has been responsible for securing contracts. That is a lie."
Cheney's sensitivity to the criticism flashed in a June 22 confrontation with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a leader in what the Democrats called "Halliburton Week," when Democrats made an effort to link Cheney to the company's activities in Iraq. When Leahy approached Cheney on the floor of the Senate, Cheney's response was immediate and rough: He cursed Leahy.
In a July hearing about Halliburton at the House Committee on Government Reform, Waxman described the company's efforts as a "boondoggle" at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. He repeatedly invoked Cheney's name, stopping shy of accusing him of any wrongdoing. Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) described Waxman's investigations of the company as a "witch hunt" for material to embarrass the vice president.
-------- iraq
Seven in Baghdad Are Killed In Two Car Bomb Attacks
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28151-2004Sep17?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 -- They saw the vehicle first, a blue Malibu, rounding the circle with the golden statue of the Iraqi poet Marouf Rasafi standing majestically in the center. The car sped up as it headed toward Martyr's Bridge, where Iraqi police had set up a roadblock.
The police and civilian witnesses saw the driver as he roared by -- his neatly trimmed beard, sunken cheeks, slicked-back blond hair. The man looked straight ahead, his hands on the wheel. As he got closer to the roadblock, he bowed his head, ducking below the dashboard, and the car blew up in a burst of flame and flying metal.
The suicide car bombing, which killed five people and wounded 20, according to an Iraqi Health Ministry official, was one of two that exploded in Baghdad on Friday morning. The other killed only the driver and a passenger, officials said.
At the same time, Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. soldiers in Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles raided residences along Haifa Street, the scene of a deadly bombing on Tuesday that killed at least 47 people and wounded 114.
And in the city of Fallujah, 35 miles west of the capital, U.S. warplanes launched two strikes against targets associated with the insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.
The first strike came early Friday morning and targeted a compound in south-central Fallujah harboring individuals "believed to be associated with recent bombing attacks and other terrorist activities throughout Iraq that have resulted in the deaths of numerous Iraqi citizens," the military said in a statement.
Health officials in Fallujah and Baghdad said the strike also killed women and children. Saad Amili, a Health Ministry spokesman, said 44 people were killed and 27 wounded. The wounded included 17 children, two women and two elderly men, he said. The director of Fallujah's hospital, Rafa Hayad Issawi, said the death toll was 51 and included 10 children and 11 women.
A Fallujah resident who lives near the site of the airstrike said insurgents had been congregating in the area early in the night but had dispersed before the attack.
The second strike occurred on Friday evening and targeted a meeting of 10 Zarqawi associates near a school and a mosque. In a statement issued after the attack, the U.S. military command in Baghdad said that "there was no indication that any innocent civilians were in the immediate vicinity of the meeting location." The military also said its initial reports indicated that the strike caused no damage to either the mosque or the school.
The assaults came on the heels of a major airstrike Thursday night in which the U.S. military targeted a compound south of Fallujah where it said an estimated 90 foreign fighters had been gathering. The military estimated that 60 non-Iraqis were killed in the attack, although there was no independent confirmation of the death toll. The Associated Press reported that residents of a nearby village were observed digging communal graves Friday to bury the dead in groups of four.
On Haifa Street, a notorious Baghdad hangout for criminal gangs and foreign guerrillas where a U.S. military helicopter fired into a crowd on Sunday and killed 13 people, residents said they were awakened at about 4 a.m. Friday by a voice from a loudspeaker. It instructed them to remain indoors and not turn on their lights and called on insurgents to turn themselves in to local police stations "to avoid clashes that kill more innocent people."
Witnesses said they could hear shooting and grenade explosions outside as dawn broke along the street, a major north-south artery on the west bank of the Tigris River. Witnesses said they could see members of the Iraqi National Guard raiding houses and pulling out people. A group of about 20 to 25 was rounded up and placed in the middle of the street, as Guardsmen piled confiscated weapons and rocket-propelled grenades alongside.
Led by a gunner in a pickup truck who had the Iraqi flag draped around his shoulders and followed by U.S. armored vehicles, a procession of Iraqi army and National Guard vehicles rolled down the street, returning any fire from insurgents. One person was killed and nine wounded, including a Guardsman, officials said. Sabah Kadim, a spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said 63 people were arrested, including Sudanese, Egyptian and Syrian fighters.
"The people we arrested are members in organized gangs and terrorists," the spokesman said. "Those are the ones responsible for the lack of security in Iraq now."
As the raid began, a vehicle attempted to break through a checkpoint set up to enforce a curfew on the neighborhood. When police fired at the car before it reached the checkpoint, it exploded, killing two people inside, U.S. military and Iraqi authorities said.
At the scene of the car bomb near Martyr's Bridge, which went off at about 12:15 p.m., witnesses described devastating carnage and burning wreckage.
Salah Ahmed, 54, a truck driver, was attempting to cross Martyr's Bridge to Haifa Street when he was stopped by Iraqi police. Eight police vehicles blocked access to the bridge, and police with guns were milling about, he said.
Ahmed said he had climbed out of his vehicle and perched on a wooden cart, waiting to be allowed across the bridge, when he saw three cars get turned away by the police. A fourth car, the Malibu, circled the Rasafi statue and kept going until it exploded, he said.
"I saw his face," Ahmed said, his knee bleeding from a shrapnel wound. "They didn't shoot at him. When the explosion happened, we were scared. We ran away to take cover."
About an hour after the blast, Ammar Ali, an Iraqi police officer, was still walking around in shock, his blue uniform shirt soaked with the blood of a colleague.
"We were protecting the Americans so nobody could get close to them," Ahmed said, his face stiff as he spoke. "But we were not as careful as the Americans. We should be more careful. We didn't think this would happen."
Another police officer, who gave his name as Hayder, stood nearby, angry and fighting back tears. "We ask the Iraqis to help us so we will be able to control the situation, get rid of the terrorists and live in peace," he said. "All the people who were killed were Iraqis."
Asked if he would quit, Hayder shook his head. "No, we know how dangerous this job is," he said. "These bombings will make us work hard to get rid of the terrorists."
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran and special correspondents Bassam Sebti, Luma Mousawi, Naseer Nouri and Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
-----
Kidnapped by Ansar Al-Islam:
How Scott Taylor Survived and Was Saved in Iraq
September 18, 2004
Antiwar.com
by Christopher Deliso, balkanalysis.com
http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=3606
Veteran Canadian war reporter Scott Taylor has to be one of the luckiest men alive right now. Although his long experience in war zones in the Balkans and Iraq has been marked by many narrow escapes, last week's kidnapping and torture by one of the world's most notorious Islamic mujahedin groups, in the middle of a pitched battle in lawless Iraq, tops them all.
This interview, conducted by phone on Friday, should be read in conjunction with the narrative Taylor himself has penned describing his imprisonment and release. It builds on the testimony he provides therein - while also including previously unreported vital information regarding the event.
Chris Deliso: Scott, I'm very glad that you survived this ordeal and that we're able to be speaking with you today. How are you feeling?
Scott Taylor: Well, I'm still pretty banged up and exhausted, but I'll pull through.
CD: Glad to hear that. Now, I know you're tired, so we don't need to go through the entire narrative again of what happened to you - readers can check it on your site - but I do want to expand on some intriguing points, and first of all get some background. So first of all, how long were you in Iraq before being kidnapped?
ST: Well, we arrived in Iraq earlier on the day - the 7th of September - that I was kidnapped. I came together with a Turkish journalist, Zeynep Tugrul, who works for the big daily newspaper Sabah. The whole thing was supposed to have been arranged by the Iraqi Turkmen Front, whose representatives I've known for a long time.
Since I was in Ankara already, I saw this as our window of opportunity. I knew that the Turkmen north, and especially Tal Afar, are almost unknown to Western reporters. No one had really been there, and now the U.S. was on the verge of a major action there. I had a local contact and a place to stay, and I was also going to present a new book I've just completed on the history of the Turkmen population in Iraq.
The Unknown Tal Afar
CD: What is this area like? I have never heard news reports mentioning any fighting there until now.
ST: Tal Afar is an amazing place - when I visited in June to do research for the book, I found there were no hotels. Imagine, a city of 400,000 people, with not one hotel! It's a closed little corner of northern Iraq, the place that time forgot. I kept thinking that National Geographic should send in a team and do a story on this place. You have people living in houses that are 400, 500 years old, mud-bricked ... I seriously felt like I was back in Biblical times being there.
CD: Sounds lovely. When did this idyllic little backwater start to pose a problem for the U.S. war effort?
ST: The U.S. had had serious problems in Tal Afar back in June 2003, when the building that was originally a CPA facility was destroyed by a massive car bomb. It was so big that it took 12 helicopters just to remove all the casualties ... but there had been no report on this. A year later, they walked me through the rubble. At that time [June 2004], I heard that the resistance was already active. They were bragging about killing three Americans a week, though I can't verify that claim.
The Plan Goes Awry
CD: So you entered Iraq from Turkey?
ST: Affirmative.
CD: And the Iraqi Turkmen Front was escorting you?
ST: Well, the plan was that we would be met at the border by a car and driver from the ITF, with a small armed escort. But when these failed to materialize, we had to take a taxi all the way to Mosul.
CD: How far was that?
ST: It's about 1.5 hours to Mosul. When we got there, we stopped in for lunch at the U.S. Air Base where I have a Canadian contractor buddy. I learned from him that all the U.S. second line repair mechanics had been sent to Tal Afar in advance, in anticipation of possible fighting. So we knew the push was imminent, and in fact some people we talked to were saying that the town had already been closed. I was told that the Americans intended to "clean house" in Tal Afar in the very near future.
So we tried to call the ITF guys in Mosul to arrange a quick ride up to Tal Afar, but lost time because of the usual phone problems you encounter in Iraq ... so it was starting to get dark. We had enough time, but only just. I was thinking if we could just get there we'll be OK, even if the U.S. did attack, I would be in a safe place and film the battle from there.
CD: Why did you think that? Did you not get a sense that tensions have increased since your last trip?
ST: Actually, all things considered, I thought this would be the safest of all possible options in Iraq, Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf, etc. ... I had a good, trustworthy contact, who lived in a relatively quiet suburb of the town. I'd stayed with him in June and was accepted with open arms. I figured I'd be among friends. The Fatal Mistake
CD: At that time, in June, were there any signs that Tal Afar might someday boil over? Was there much of a resistance established in the area back then?
ST: Sure, I sensed a lot of tension in the air. I had been told by Jashar that I'd be safe with him. But even walking around, I could see the hatred on the streets; the locals would look at me, and think I was an American. But being with him, I felt safe.
As for the resistance, they were already stockpiling arms at that point. I mean, they had to be - the size and scope of munitions sources that I saw when kidnapped last week indicated to me that this resistance campaign had to have been planned for months. I don't know, perhaps I'm the only Western journalist with military background and training to have seen how their operation works, how extensive it is.
CD: But you didn't get the sense of a qualitative difference at the beginning of this trip compared to previous ones, i.e., in terms of danger or the way you were treated by locals?
ST: The fatal mistake was in not knowing that the U.S.-trained Iraqi police were in collusion with the resistance.
When we got to the outskirts of Tal Afar, it was about quarter past 7:00 on Tuesday night [7 September]. There were around a dozen Iraqi policemen monitoring the checkpoint on the road going into the town. Scared civilians were trying to get out, because everyone knew that the big battle with U.S. forces was imminent. The city had basically been given over to heavily armed resistance fighters.
Assuming that the U.S.-trained police would help us, we asked them to help us get in touch with Jashar. They seemed happy to do so, and told us to get into a waiting car filled with masked gunmen. One of them said, "we will take you to Doctor Jashar - please do not be afraid."
CD: Masked gunmen? Didn't that set off alarm bells for you?
ST: Well, at first I thought that these men belonged to a special police force or something, and didn't worry too much. But then, further inside the city, we saw that the streets were lined with other heavily armed masked fighters - the fabled resistance.
We were taken to a resistance safe house, where they accused us of being spies and confiscated everything we had - cameras, equipment, identifying documents, etc.
There they fed us, nearly executed me for being a "Jewish spy," and then hustled us on to another safe house, where they relieved me of my money and interrogated me at length as to what I was doing in Tal Afar. The leader of the group, who identified himself as the "Emir" (leader), told me to sleep. "I will check your story," he said. "If you are telling the truth, we will release you - if not, you die."
Well, it turned out that our story did check out, but unfortunately for us the emir was liquidated in his Land Cruiser by a Predator missile during the battle that followed. So our release was delayed by several painful days while his men argued over what to do with us.
The American Buildup
CD: Right. We'll get to the rest of that story later. First, can you tell us what had happened to precipitate the battle in the days before your arrival in Tal Afar?
ST: During the previous week, there were bits and pieces in the media about ongoing attacks. The resistance had destroyed some U.S. armored vehicles, and after some serious skirmishing they had taken control of the city. Although the U.S. had an air base 5 km from Tal Afar, inside the city itself they had no presence.
And so the U.S. tried to mount a limited operation using what looked like "official" Iraqi defense forces, but were really just Kurdish peshmergas in new uniforms. But this strategy failed. The cannon fodder Kurds were defeated by a well organized Islamic resistance. In fact, the day before I was kidnapped, they had beheaded 30 prisoners, a lot of them Kurds.
The Americans then realized they had bitten off more than the Kurds could chew. A second Stryker armored vehicle battalion was sent up from Mosul, and it was supported by air strikes that began on Wednesday, lasting through Thursday and Friday.
The Scope of the Insurgency
CD: Based on your experiences, what can you say about the composition of the resistance in that part of Iraq? What are their motivations and goals?
ST: The core of the resistance was made up of Islamic religious fundamentalists. Most are Turkmen, but note that they are not Turkmen nationalists. According to the leader, who told me that their group is in fact part of Ansar Al-Islam, Osama and Al-Zarqawi are their brothers. So religion supercedes nationalism.
While many of the fighters may be Turkmen, they are fighting for Allah, and they are cooperating with anyone else, be it Kurd or Arab, similarly motivated by jihad against the Americans.
CD: So after all the American talk about Islamic terrorism thriving in Iraq, this was the real thing, huh?
ST: When I saw the level of organization and apparent troop numbers, and how everyone is prepared to die - these guys aren't bullshitting. All the stuff we were told before the war about how the Ba'athists would all gladly die for Saddam, well that obviously didn't turn out to be the case. But these guys, these fundamentalists, are fighting to die. This is a very potent weapon.
Worse, the American invasion has actually created this terrorism because it substantiated over time all the ugliest scenarios that the radical clerics were warning about. People being crushed by tanks, U.S. soldiers breaking down doors, violating the sanctity of the home, abusing civilians, etc., seeing all this go down has an effect. And so the strong anti-American attitude of the clerics started to seem justified to previously disinterested local people by events on the ground, and you have religion emerge as the single cause capable of uniting members of ethnic groups who'd previously been fighting only one another.
CD: So, as you've said many times in the past, the Americans have brought this upon themselves. Did you witness anything to attest to this new cooperation among the resistance?
ST: Everywhere we went, it was obvious that the militants had the full cooperation of the U.S.-trained Iraqi police. Whenever we transited outside the city, to the corners of Mosul or the checkpoints, the cops would see us bound in the back seats - and offer cigarettes to our captors! We'd be flanked by these gauntlets of teenage boys, cheering and banging on the roofs. It was clear that there's a lot of cooperation between Arab police and Turkmen fundamentalists.
At one point, our Turkmen captors handed us off to some young and violent Arab "pupils," so they could go back to Tal Afar for more fighting. There was coordination with local police, of course, but interestingly enough the resistance group at that house included Arab fundamentalists and senior Ba'athists. My co-prisoners, the Turkish journalist and an Iraqi Arab, a driver for UNICEF, knew the languages being spoken so I learned what was going on.
Homicide at the Hands of the Taxpayer
CD: So if the resistance is so large and diverse, and is at very least supported by Iraqi police "loyal" to the U.S., what chance do the Americans actually have?
ST: I learned that the Iraqi police on the checkpoints were contributing part of their salary to the resistance's local leader, the emir. After all, they're whacking the crap out of these police recruits all over the place throughout Iraq, so it's partially protection money.
One guy was laughing at me and saying how ironic it is that the Americans are being attacked with RPGs purchased with their own money. Sad to say, the U.S. taxpayer is actually funding the Iraqi resistance. By paying these cops' salaries, U.S. taxpayers are actually helping to buy the weapons that are killing American soldiers every day.
CD: Incredible. It can't get worse than that.
ST: I don't know, maybe it can. Consider also that my mujahedin captors told me in advance the exact time the U.S. air strikes would hit them. I said, "How the hell you know?" To which the guy laughed and said, "Don't be stupid, of course we know." They have infiltrated U.S. command even.
The Mujahedin's Unbeatable Tactic: Death
CD: Now I can understand, hypothetically anyway, this mujahedin ideal of dying for one's religion, and of there being some glory in that after the fact. But on a tactical level, don't they realize just going out to get killed is stupid? What about living to fight another day? I mean, this isn't the way my childhood hero Francis Marion would have done it.
ST: You know why? It's because they want to die. They are not interested in saving lives. And they have a constantly replenished supply of willing martyrs to tap into.
CD: But tactically, if they wanted to inflict maximum damage to the Americans, certainly wouldn't they at least try to learn from their mistakes?
ST: Well, they have been learning from their mistakes to some extent. The resistance is better organized and more effective than it was before. But there are many things they could learn that they simply don't. Take the Americans' night vision goggle advantage ... if you read Tommy Franks' book he talks about how the Apaches were hit in Nasiriyah: the pilots actually couldn't see anything because they were blinded from too many lights being on in the town. It interfered with their night vision.
However, the resistance fighters who imprisoned us thought they were being smart to turn all the lights off - failing to grasp that the U.S. can actually see better when it's dark out. They could have flooded the place with lights and done better in the battle.
Yet at the end of the day, the point is that they've got the courage and the will to die in battle. Indeed, at one point when we were being switched from car to car at a desert convoy rendezvous, two of the cars were loaded up with explosives and four aspiring suicide bombers, all set to go back to Tal Afar and wreak carnage on the Americans. And you know what? The ones left behind with us were so sad. It was like they were envious that it wasn't their turn to die yet.
CD: You really can't fight against that, can you.
ST: Not for an army like the American one, whose soldiers are fighting to live. And the worst thing for the U.S. is that their heavy-handed tactics have radicalized the population, so that local Turkmen guys who previously had no strong religious fervor are now willing to die as martyrs. Unlike what the Pentagon is saying, I saw no foreign fighters there. When we were imprisoned, we were housed by local people, in their own homes. Their mothers and wives were doing the cooking and exhorting their sons to go out and die as martyrs. It's hopeless for the U.S.
CD: Did you find out if the U.S. had taken any casualties during the Tal Afar battle? Did the mujahedin have anything to cheer about aside from their newly created martyrs?
ST: I had heard that they downed one helicopter when I got there, and afterwards they also claimed to have hit three more, though I can't verify that. A lot of the time we were hooded or blindfolded, after all, and I couldn't see much of the actual fighting.
The Confusing Human Dimension
CD: Let's get back to your experience as a prisoner. From what I understand, you were transferred to numerous houses between Tuesday and Saturday, threatened with death on several occasions while also told that you'd be freed on others, tortured and interrogated at length before finally being freed on Saturday.
ST: Correct.
CD: As I understand from your article, the most difficult part of the whole ordeal was not the beatings but the psychological torment, no?
ST: Yes. They played mind games with me by threatening to kill me, and then saying I would be released, and so on. The mental pressure is incredible, preparing yourself for death and then getting a reprieve ... only to be condemned again soon thereafter. Some things I understood as a soldier, like the need to blindfold or handcuff me. I didn't resent that. But it was the excruciating mental torture that was the worst, even more than the heavy beatings and physical intimidation.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all was the juxtaposition of brutal terroristic tactics with this sweet Middle Eastern hospitality. In between the beatings they would treat us very well. They never denied me water, and as the guests, we would be served dinner before them. And good dinners too, I might add.
CD: That must have been very disconcerting.
ST: Indeed. I remember on Thursday night, there was a cool breeze coming in from the window, and I was lying on my side, pretending to sleep. I noticed the terrorist who had been assigned to guard me get up and walk over toward me, though I still pretended to be asleep. I was afraid it was time for more beatings.
But you know what the guy does? He reaches around and pulls the blanket up on me, as you would for a kid; apparently, he thought I might be cold from the window. So this kind of diametrically opposed behavior was really confusing. Even though they were bloodthirsty militants, they did have a human side to them.
I mean, even when they're threatening, "You're going to die, this is your last supper," they're beaming because they've given you the best part of the chicken!
Of course, for them dying is a wonderful thing. So the mindset is like, "I'm giving you the best part of the chicken and I'm going to kill you - what the hell else do you want?"
CD: (Laughing) Yes indeed.
Saved - by the Internet?
CD: I understand that throughout your captivity the mujahedin tried to ascertain your identity, frequently charging you with being an Israeli spy. Why did they always call you an Israeli spy? Could they just not think of anything more damning to accuse a foreigner of?
ST: Pretty much. They didn't know who I was, since all of my gear had been swallowed up in rubble after the American air strikes on Tal Afar. I think it helped them to work up the energy they needed to beat a defenseless, handcuffed prisoner.
CD: But you were able to convince them finally that you were indeed just a Canadian journalist, right?
ST: Well, I guess so. After torturing me, the mujahedin gave me a pen and paper and told me to write down all the Web sites that might help prove my case. Even though they told me I had "failed the test" afterwards, I'm pretty sure from their behavior that they found enough articles there to vindicate me.
A later interrogator who questioned me at length was especially interested in why I hadn't denounced the "imperialist occupation" of Iraq. He was very clear about this word. Come on - of course I have criticized the occupation on numerous occasions.
Thinking fast, I specifically referred them to one of our earlier interviews, "The Empire Strikes Out," as well as the other interviews on Antiwar.com and on your site, besides other articles I've published.
CD: So, do you think that these interviews helped persuade the mujahedin to release you?
ST: I can't prove that, but I've got to think it was probably a big help. ... At very least I think it kept me alive at various points when they easily could have killed me, and would have.
And technically, it was this last group with the "anti-imperialist" leader that released me. So the specific articles I gave them, plus what you get when doing a search for my name and Iraq, yeah, I got to think that it helped swing things in my favor. So ... thanks.
CD: Wow, that is great - the moment we journalists live for.
The Mysterious Release
CD: Aside from that, do you know how your sudden release was expedited? I know the mujahedin didn't tell you anything about what was going on.
ST: As far as I know, my association with the Iraqi Turkmen Front and their local leader helped get me released, and to get out of the country alive. After all, when the mujahedin threw me into that waiting cab, I was stuck with no documents and almost no money, in a very volatile city in northern Iraq.
CD: Where did the cabbie take you?
ST: The decision had been made that I'd be sent to the main office of the ITF in Mosul. They were in contact with the Turkish government, as was Zeynep, who had been released before me and was trying her best to help me get out too.
CD: But do you think some negotiations between higher powers and your captors had anything to do with it?
ST: I don't know who pulled the strings, if anyone, and I don't want to know. The stakes in this game are so high now. There are all kinds of known and unknown elements involved in Iraq, and it's not even desirable to think about it. If someone put a gun to my head and asked how I was released, I wouldn't know what to say. After all, the Ansar Al-Islam is not known for releasing foreigners. No way would these people, motivated purely by Islam, have done it for a ransom.
CD: When you got to the Turkish border, I understand an officer from the Canadian Embassy was waiting for you. Were you debriefed by the intelligence services? Has the CIA shown an interest in your adventure with the mujahedin?
ST: No, I wasn't debriefed by the CIA. We had to give a statement to the Turkish police, and discuss with my government's embassy staff, of course. But really, all we had was a worm's eye view the whole time, mostly being handcuffed, hooded and blindfolded, with no idea where we were being taken. I wouldn't be much use to any of them.
Reflections and Thoughts on the Future
CD: Scott, what can you predict regarding the situation in northern Iraq, especially considering the U.S. promise to "pacify" the country before January elections?
ST: I can tell you, Mosul's about to blow. The resistance can operate with impunity, and is growing, and the Americans don't have the numbers to cope ... what was once 22,000 soldiers in the area with the 82nd Airborne has now been whittled down to just 6,000 soldiers with this replacement Stryker Brigade. So they're stretched too thin to deal with the coming major insurgency.
The Americans are in fact almost invisible - you don't see them on the streets of Mosul. They've ceded the underground control of the city to various factions of rebels, who are all working together, exchanging weapons, intel, hostages, etc.
CD: It doesn't sound good for the Americans. Tell me, after this experience, will you go back to Iraq?
ST: Well, I don't have a passport, so it's irrelevant. But seriously, no way. At least not in the near future. It's just way too unstable. Even for me, with all my experience and contacts - after almost 20 trips to the country - seeing what I did in terms of the organized and fundamentalist-minded resistance, it's just way too dangerous.
CD: This must have been pretty tough for your family.
ST: Well, yes it was, but fortunately my wife only knew about me being a prisoner for six hours until I was released. After she herself was released, Zeynep called my wife and said I was a captive still, but not to worry. Six hours later I was free, so my wife didn't have time to get too distraught.
And in the end, she took a philosophical view. After all, aside from everything else, I didn't have to pay for transportation, hotels or food during my entire Iraqi vacation.
CD: Scott, you're a brave man - a little crazy, but brave. Now get some rest. We need you back in action.
ST: Thanks - I will.
----
Hostage in Iraq: Five days in Hell
By Scott Taylor
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_243.htm
7:16 p.m., 7 September, Tal Afar Iraq. It was nearly dusk when we arrived at the city outskirts of Tal Afar. On the main highway to Mosul, about a dozen Iraqi policemen at a checkpoint were supervising a frightened exodus of civilian refugees. For the past week there had been media reports of escalating violence between resistance fighters and U.S. troops in Tal Afar, and already the many of the residents had fled the embattled city. From American services in the Mosul Airfield, I had learned earlier that day that a major U.S. offensive was about to begin. The Americans had reinforced their local garrison with an additional battalion of armour and infantry and I was advised that within days, the U.S. military was going to 'clean house' in Tal Afar.
It was my intention to enter the city before it was shut down, and then send reports about the civilian casualties and possible humanitarian crisis that would result from a major battle.
Admittedly, it had not been easy to find a taxi driver willing to take me to Tal Afar. All the drivers in Mosul had been warned that the mujahedeen were in control of the city - and that it was 'too dangerous'. One Kurdish fellow disagreed with his colleagues and said that their fears were unfounded. With daylight fading, we quickly made a bargain on the fare and set off.
Tal Afar is an almost entirely Turkmen enclave in northwestern Iraq. I had just finished writing a book about the history of these Turkish - speaking indigenous Iraqis. As part of my research, I had visited Tal Afar in June and felt that if I could just reach my known contacts, I would be safe among friends. I knew there would be some risk involved - particularly once the Americans attacked - but I planned to observe the fighting from a safe house, well away from any actual combat.
The sight of U.S. paid Iraqi police forces monitoring traffic had seemed like a good sign that things were still under control, despite the recent fighting. As I did not have an exact address for my previous contact, I approached a police checkpoint to ask for assistance. When I asked them to be taken "to Dr. Yashar", they recognized his name as a prominent local Turkmen official and eagerly nodded in the affirmative. A senior policeman was summoned and he instructed me and Zeynep Tugrul, a Turkish journalist who was serving as my translator, and filing her own reports for Sabah, a daily national newspaper, to climb into a nearby car containing four masked gunman. As we clambered into the backseat, one of the gunmen said in excellent English, "We will take you to Doctor Yashar - please do not be afraid". I had presumed that these men were some sort of special police force - our own Canadian counter - terrorists teams often wear ski-masks - so I had no immediate cause for concern. However, as soon as we entered Tal Afar, I saw that the streets were full of similarly masked resistance fighters armed with Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). I suddenly realized we were in the hands of the resistance. Still believing that they were taking me to my friend's house, instead we were ushered into a small courtyard outside a walled two - story building. There were about a half dozen armed men inside - none of them smiling.
As soon as the metal door clanged shut behind us, the English - speaking leader said, "You are spies... and now you are prisoners". All of our cameras, equipment and identification were taken from us and we were told to sit on a mat with our backs to the wall. "The Americans will attack soon and I have to see to my men," said our captor. "I will deal with you when I return".
Shortly after nightfall, they brought a platter of food into the compound, and in what would soon become a routine pattern, they served us first before eating dinner themselves. Admittedly I did not have much of an appetite. The plates had just been cleared away when another car pulled up outside and four more gunmen came quickly through the door. Before I could even react, I was pulled to my feet and pressed against the wall with my hands on top of my head. Almost immediately I heard the distinct sound of a Kalashnikov being cocked about a metre behind me. In fear and shock at the realization that they were about to execute me, Zeynep screamed at them in Turkish: "Don't shoot him... he has a son!"
The outburst was enough to distract them momentarily and they began to explain to her the necessity of killing a "Jewish spy". Thankfully, I had no idea what was being said. The brief discussion was still taking place when our original captor returned. Harsh words were exchanged between the two groups of gunmen, and it seemed as though a prisoner's fate was the proprietorship of those who made the capture: The would-be executioners left.
It was at this point that Zeynep was blindfolded and taken away for questioning. The remaining guards - their ages ranging from 15 to 50 - took alternating turns between watching me and crouching behind the second - floor parapet and looking in the sky for signs of the imminent U.S. attack. About two hours later, it was my turn to be blindfolded and roughly manhandled into what felt to be an SUV or Land Rover. At the second house, I was rushed through several doorways and up several stairs. With my hands tied behind my back and unable to see, I stumbled and fell several times only to be pulled forcibly back to my feet and once again shoved forward. "Hurry, hurry, you bastard Jew," whispered one of my guards as he slammed my head into a doorframe.
I was forced to lie face down on a mat, and two men carefully searched through all of my pockets. Finding my money inside my sock (about $700 U.S.) they laughed and said, "Your money is our money - you won't need cash in heaven".
It was difficult to gauge how long I laid there in the dark, but my shoulders were aching when they finally untied my hands and brought me to another room for interrogation. My blindfold was removed and they shone a bright flashlight directly in my eyes. "Which intelligence agency are you working for?" began the questioning. For about one hour I did my best to answer all their allegations and explain to them my intentions for going to Tal Afar was as a journalist. Two men were questioning me. In what seemed like a bad Hollywood comedy, someone started up a generator outside and, the lights came back on and the two interrogators clumsily tried to pull their ski-masks back on before I could recognize their faces.
With the tension broken, the one who had identified himself as "Emir" (leader) actually started to laugh and left his mask off. This man had been among the group that had taken us at the police checkpoint. "Sleep now and I will check your story. If you are telling the truth, we will release you - if not, you die," he said.
--
It was about 6 a.m. the following morning when I was kicked awake, rolled onto my stomach, blindfolded and bound. This time they transported Zeynep and I at the same time. Although the vehicle had roared through the deserted streets at top speed, you could hear the engines of U.S. unmanned aircraft flying overhead, watching every move made by the resistance. Knowing that these "Predators" have the capability to not only transmit video images but also launch guided missiles, I felt incredibly vulnerable during that short drive. At the third house, our blindfolds were removed and we were fed a generous breakfast of fried eggs and flatbread. After a cup of tea, I was escorted to a small room with barred windows. There were three guards at this facility which appeared to be a small house or workshop. Two were middle-aged men while the other was just a 15-year-old boy. They were obviously not frontline mujahedeen, but were still supportive of the resistance.
In the first hours, they had been very strict in enforcing the rules. I was to sit on a broken chair in the middle of my cell. However, as the temperature rose to a 45° Celsius and my sun-baked room turned into an oven, they had compassionately allowed me to venture outside. By nightfall everyone was so relaxed that Zeynep and I sat eating dinner and talking to our guards. The young boy stated that his only ambition in life was to "die a martyr." Shortly past dark, the Emir returned and informed that he had confirmed that we were not spies. He gave a 'Muslim promise' to set us free in the morning. On this night Zeynep and I would remain his 'guests'. We were also about to become front - row spectators to an intense battle between resistance and the U.S. forces.
--
Just past midnight, the American Apache helicopters attacked. Their arrival over Tal Afar was greeted by a heavy barrage of RPG and cannon fire. We could hear the distinctive 'crack', 'whump' sounds of the Iraqi rocket grenades being launched and then deafening bursts of fire from the Apaches. From inside the workshop's courtyard, we could not see the battle's progress, but from the sounds of the gunfire we could plot its course. On several occasions, the mujahedeen fighters all across the city would scream out "Allah akbar! Allah akbar!" (God is great!) I had first thought that these cries were in response to them downing a helicopter, but our young guard explained that they were cheering the deaths of their own, newly created martyrs.
At about 3 a.m. there was a loud banging on the courtyard gate. Our guards let a mujahedeen fighter inside, and he spoke quickly with them in Turkish. Hurriedly a storeroom was opened and the fighter helped himself to three RPGs, which he tucked inside his belt. I could see inside the small room, which was literally packed with munitions, and I realized that we were being held captive in one of the resistance's ammo depots. The fighter took a bowl of water, drank thirstily, then rushed back out onto the darkened streets. Minutes later he began firing from a rooftop about fifty metres away. He had only managed to launch two of his rockets before he disappeared in a burst of 25 mm cannon fire from an Apache which literally blew him into pieces. Following a brief silence came the chorus of "Allah Akbar!"
--
In the morning, Tal Afar was strangely quiet except for the continuous buzzing of the unmanned Predators overhead. The Apaches were gone and the resistance was licking its wounds. It was reported that 50 mujahedeen had been killed and another 120 wounded. The worst news of all was that the Emir had been killed, the target of a Predator missile that had successfully destroyed his Land Rover. While his followers celebrated his martyrdom, the Emir's death left a power vacuum among the mujahedeen.
Around mid-morning, a group of gunmen arrived at the workshop to take us away. Zeynep pleaded with them in Turkish that we were to go free, but it was to no avail. "We received no such instruction," said the man who now appeared to be in charge. "You are spies."
This time they were extremely rough in applying my blindfold. It was tied so tight I could sense losing blood circulation in my brain. They pushed and prodded me blindly towards a car and then deliberately bashed my head against the doorframe. "Jewish pig!" spat one of the guards.
At the fourth house, which smelled like some sort of farm complex, I was once again rushed through doorways and then down into a cellar. In addition to the blindfold they placed a hood over my head and I felt I was suffocating in the heat and dust. I could feel the fear well up inside me as one of the gunmen forced me onto a mat and placed the barrel of a Kalashnikov against my neck. "Don't speak... Don't move."
Another group of men entered the cellar and began questioning Zeynep as to our identity. She told them of the Emir's promise, and advised them that our papers, ID and passports were all at the first house. Finally, we were allowed to remove the hoods while the mujahedeen went to check out our story. At this point I realized that there was another prisoner in the room with us. He was an Iraqi from Mosul - also accused of spying. He was not allowed to remove his hood.
Throughout the rest of the morning, there was plenty of activity in the resistance bunker. About thirty or so fighters were busy transferring stockpiles of RPGs and explosives. In addition to the gruff male voices, we could hear an elderly woman shouting encouragement to the men. "They call her mother" whispered Zeynep. "She is encouraging her 'sons' to go out and become martyrs and die in battle. Can you believe it?"
Our previous interrogator returned to our makeshift cell to advise us that our bags, cameras, and identity papers were now buried in a heap of rubble: The first house had been destroyed by a precision - guided bomb. With no proof of our nationality or profession, a heated debate among the fighters soon erupted outside in the corridor.
Listening to their conversation, Zeynep suddenly gasped: "Oh my god - they're going to shoot us!" I fought to suppress the panic that I felt. It was then the other prisoner spoke for the first time. In good English he said, "Are you sure?"
The door burst open and several men stepped inside. "Stand up," one of them said to me. "You are the first to die, American pig". My hands were still tied and I felt helpless as one of them approached me with another blindfold. I told them that I did not want a blindfold - not out of any bravado, but because I found that the sense of fear was magnified by the inability to see. I received a punch on the head for my protest and the blindfold was pulled snugly into place. This time they added a gag and a black hood.
Once again, I could feel the claustrophobia and fear beginning to panic me, and I struggled to maintain some composure. The cries of fear and alarm from Zeynep had caught the attention of the woman, who apparently had not realized that the men were detaining a female. She entered our cell and a heated discussion took place between her and the fighters. Several times I was struck during this conversation and I still believed I was about to die. Finally one of the mujahedeen came close to me and whispered, "I have a brother in Canada... I have just saved you my friend - at least for now".
Instead of being shot, they had decided to take us with them. They had learned that the Americans were about to bomb their complex so they were going to leave Tal Afar until the air strikes were over. The hood and mask remained in place, and the man who said he'd saved me warned me not to make any noise. "If my people hear someone speak English they will beat you to death before I can stop them - now move!"
Once again I was roughly manhandled through the passageways and pushed into the backseat of a car. I was shaking uncontrollably as I realized that I was not going to die - at least not that moment.
--
Although the Americans had claimed they had 'sealed off' Tal Afar prior to launching their offensive, I soon learned it was nothing more than wishful thinking. We had left the bunker in a six car convoy and made our way northward into the open desert. It had taken some time before the mujahedeen in our car had relented and allowed us to remove our hoods and blindfolds. Our hands were still tied, but I had sweat so much in the 45° heat that the moisture had loosened the straps. I was able to free my hands easily - and in an effort to gain their trust, I had shown them that my bonds needed to be retied. The man next to me had simply laughed and instructed me to "forget about it".... After all where can you go in the desert?
As we began chatting, this short grey - haired man with a close - cropped beard informed me that his brother was the now - deceased Emir. "I'm sorry about his death," I said to which he replied, "Why be sorry? We celebrate his entry into Heaven."
What was reassuring to me was that, as the brother of the former leader, this man appeared to have filled the immediate leadership void in the group. I was especially relieved to learn that his brother had told him of the decision to set us free. We were also told that we had only to have our identities confirmed - via a Google search on the internet - and he would keep the promise of the martyred Emir. In the meantime, we would remain with the mujahedeen.
Around 2 p.m. we had stopped near a remote desert house. The nearly 30 fighters had assembled around our car and began to conduct a mass prayer. Zeynep and I were instructed to remain in the car. It was as they were engrossed in their prayer that I spotted the two American helicopters coming out of the south - low and fast and headed straight towards our parked convoy. I cried out in alarm. At first the mujahedeen were angry at the interruption until they too spotted the approaching threat. Caught out in the open, they were sitting ducks. Nobody could move; they simply watched the helicopters steadily bear down on us.
At about 800 metres distance, the gunships inexplicably banked away to the east without so much as a reconnaissance overpass of our mysterious group of vehicles in the middle of the desert. We had to have been in plain view, but the Americans turned away. "They always fly the same patrol routes" explained one of the fighters, "They see nothing."
Shortly after the helicopters had departed two additional cars joined us and the mujahedeen began hastily transferring the huge stockpiles of explosives and rockets into them. "We are making them into suicide bombs," said Mubashir, the Emir's brother, of the cars being loaded and wired. "These men will head back into Tal Afar and use the vehicles to destroy the American armoured vehicles." A total of four mujahedeen climbed into the suicide cars and as they drove back into the battle, their comrades shouted a final encouragement.
We proceeded on through the desert towards the northern outskirts of Mosul. Along the way we stopped at several farmhouses where the residents eagerly offered the fighters food and water. When we actually entered the Mosul checkpoint, the Iraqi police appeared to take no notice of the dusty column of cars packed with bearded men armed with Kalashnikov's and RPG's. A gauntlet of young boys lined the route to cheer our convoy and offer water and cigarettes. Instead of entering the city however, we headed further north to a deserted house that was still under construction. We were ordered inside the building, and it was at this point I realized that the other hostage, a driver for UNICEF, had spent the entire 3 hour desert transit in the trunk of one of the cars. He emerged from the vehicle, still blindfolded, covered in dust and sweat, and without his shoes. He was in terrible condition, but he made no sound of complaint as they hurried us into the empty house.
There was some confusion among the fighters at this point. They were eager to return to Tal Afar - not sit out the battle in a safe house. All but one of their cars soon departed, leaving only two armed guards with us. The possibility of escape certainly crossed my mind. It was the hottest part of the day and the sentries were exhausted. Although it was open ground, the Mosul highway was clearly, visible about 2 kilometres away. With all the passing traffic it would be possible to flag down a ride - if I could only survive the run. Before I could give much thought to such a plan, another car pulled up at our hideout. Four new mujahedeen strode into our building and immediately began berating the two guards for being lenient with us. The leader of this group was a short, stocky, little man who strutted about with his ski-mask on. He wasted no time in making his thoughts known. "The Turkish girl will live... you two will die" he said pointing at me and the UNICEF driver. "I will cut off your heads at dusk and you will be buried there," pointing to a freshly dug grave-sized ditch about twenty metres from the house.
Zeynep was removed to another room and we were told to prepare ourselves to die. Although forbidden to talk whenever the guard was distracted, the driver and I took the opportunity to encourage each other and try to provide support. "At least we will not die alone" he said.
As dusk approached we were offered a final meal of flatbread, roast chicken and tomatoes. The maniacal little leader came to watch us eat, all the while aiming his gun at us. "Eat, eat... Why do you have no appetite, are you afraid American pig?" he said and then laughed at his own joke. Although I was certainly not hungry, I did my best to choke down a few difficult mouthfuls. Inside, I had to stifle a trembling fear from overcoming my composure. My fellow prisoner began to sob, and I reached over to take his hand.
"How long do you think the pain will last?" he asked. It was something which I had been giving careful consideration and I replied, "About three seconds". As the sun started to set on the horizon, Mubashir drove up and entered into a heated argument with the newcomer. Reassured at the sound of his voice, I had risked a glance out of the window - just in time to see the ceremonial dagger being returned to the trunk of the car. We had been spared once again.
--
When it had proved impossible to enter Mosul safely, we had circled back into the desert and spent the night at another farmhouse. The scorching heat of the day was replaced by a cool breeze, and after a meal of lamb and rice we had spent a relatively relaxing evening under the stars. It was the first good sleep that I'd had in days and I began to believe that with Mubashir to protect us, we would survive this ordeal.
It was during some candid conversations at this farm that I finally learned the identity of my captors. As we talked about the various ethnic factions and politics at play in northern Iraq, I had mentioned the group Ansar al-Islam. Mubashir had looked surprised at my comment and said, "Don't you know? We are Ansar al-Islam?" My heart sank when I heard this because I knew that this group of fundamentalist extremists had links to al-Qaeda. "Yes," confided Mubashir, "Osama is our brother in Afghanistan, and al- Zaqarwi is our brother in Jordan."
This group had never before released a foreigner and this revelation explained why they had never mentioned ransoming us off as hostages. The Ansar al-Islam fought for their religious beliefs - not money. Although I expressed my fears to Mubashir, he once again stressed the fact that his brother's wish would be granted - provided we were telling the truth.
We spent Friday morning at the farm awaiting word that we could enter Mosul and be granted an audience with the new Emir. Again, everything seemed to be relaxed, and although the notion of having someone pronounce a 'live-or-die' sentence upon me was still very frightening, Mubashir assured us that his brother's promise would be kept. We got the word around 2 p.m. that the Emir would see us. We climbed into one car - the UNICEF driver in the trunk, Zeynep and I along with Mubashir and two guards in the front. Our hands were not tied and we wore no blindfolds - everything seemed to be going well. However, once inside Mosul, it became apparent that something had gone wrong with the plan.
We had stopped at several homes and picked up different guides at various locations. Eventually we were taken to a large house in a northern suburb, and led into an empty room. The UNICEF driver was released from the trunk and taken into a small anteroom beneath a staircase. Mubashir had complained of being ill, and he now seemed disinterested in our fate. There were about a dozen young men inside this house and they were extremely hostile towards us. Blankets were placed across all the windows despite the soaring temperature.
Zeynep whispered that these new men were not Turkmen but Arabs, as she no longer understood their conversation. Mubashir made some sort of statement to them on our behalf and then bade us farewell. He and his men were heading back into Tal Afar to join the fight.
Within minutes of his departure, the Arabs burst into the room and roughly blindfolded me. As I tried to protest, I was kicked in the ribs, knocking the wind out of me. "Shut up American spy!" shouted my assailant.
For the next hour, I was interrogated - beginning again with their presumption that I was either a CIA or Mossad spy. I gave all the possible details of my identity and when asked how I could confirm these "lies" I told them to research my writings on the Internet. In particular, they could not believe that I had written features for al-Jazeera's website. Although intense, I was relieved when the questioning had ended without any physical force being used. I was premature in my assumption.
I had barely removed the blindfold and taken a sip of water when five men rushed back into the room. I could see the batons and ropes, but I had no time to react before I was pulled to my feet. When I attempted to resist, my feet were knocked out from under me, and I was savagely kicked. They blindfolded me and gagged me with a headscarf. My hands were tied behind my back and I was rolled over with my feet up in the air - tied to a pole. Two men held the pole up when two others began beating my feet with straps and batons.
At first I could not see the blows coming. In his pent up fury, one of my attackers struck my face several times with his fist knocking my blindfold aside. I mentally promised myself not to give them the satisfaction of hearing me scream until after the 20th blow. I bit down hard on the cloth and focussed on counting rather than the pain. I kept my promise, but on the 21st strike I screamed out, "F - - k!" the cloth muffling the sound somewhat. With each successive blow I uttered the same expletive. They deliberately hit the same spot on my thigh repeatedly. For the first four or five blows the pain would increase incrementally and then the final strike would force an involuntary convulsion. I could feel the pain explode in my head and my body jack-knifed upwards reflexively.
In these instances I found myself blurting out "Jeeesus Christ!" through my gritted teeth. I lost all track of time - I could have been tortured for 5 minutes or 25 - I have no real conception of the actual duration. I do remember that despite the excruciating pain in my legs, I kept fearing that the next blow would be to my genitals. With my legs splayed apart and upended I felt incredibly vulnerable. When the beating finally stopped, I felt a tremendous sense of relief that they had not used the batons on my crotch.
After my feet were cut loose, I was roughly pulled upright and the interrogator handed me a pen and paper. "You will write down all the websites you think might help to confirm that you are in fact a Canadian journalist", he said. I made some remark that I would have gladly done so without the beating, but my attempt at black humour was wasted.
I had been badly beaten and as I walked out of the anteroom back into the main parlour, most of the Arab 'pupils' had gathered to see my reaction. I tried my best not to let them see any weakness by pressing the pen hard against the paper so that they could not see my hands shaking. Taking the list of websites from me, the interrogator told me, "If this checks out, you'll live... if you lied - you die."
A few minutes later, I was ushered into an adjacent room, told to lie face down on the floor and a gun barrel was placed against the back of my neck. It was Zeynep's turn to be beaten, and as she cried out in pain, the guard behind me kept repeating, "You can spare her the pain - simply confess that you are a spy." As I kept uttering denials, he spat on my head and said, "Only a dog would let a woman suffer like that!" I thought to myself, "And what kind of animal would torture a woman?"
For several hours after the beating, I was kept alone in that room. My legs were aching and would occasionally seize up on me. I tried to stand, but the guards insisted that I remain seated on a mat. When the interrogator finally re-entered my holding cell he said, "You failed the test on the internet. Prepare yourself to die - tonight". As the door banged shut behind him, I once again had an all-consuming sense of dread. The next time the door opened it was an armed guard and one of the 'pupils' carrying a platter of food. Once again I was being encouraged to eat my final meal.
I did not know it at the time, Zeynep and the UNICEF driver had been set free, while both of them were told that I had been beheaded.
After I picked away at my food, the dishes were cleared away and a heavy set young Arab entered the room. He was grinning from ear to ear and I recognized him as one of my torturers. "I am the lucky one who has been chosen to kill you, American dog," he said.
It was at this time I decided to play my final card. Zeynep had always told me that I should tell our captors I wished to convert to Islam - even if I wasn't sincere, she thought it might buy me time (if not freedom). "I want you to teach me an Islamic prayer before you kill me." I said, "A man about to die should have a God to pray to - shouldn't he?" Other guards and pupils had overheard this and they seemed excited at the prospect of converting a 'Kaffir' and then executing him.
As they started to explain the conversion process and necessary prayers, one of the clerics returned to the house. He put an end to the commotion by informing me my religious conversion was no longer necessary as I was "free to go". Thinking this may be yet another test of my resolve to convert, I explained that in that case it was even more important, "as a man needs a God to thank for sparing him his life."
I was advised that the procedure would have to be performed at a later date, as a car was waiting to take me to a safe house in preparation for my release. Once again, I dared to start believing that I might actually survive this ordeal.
--
My eyes had been taped shut with electrical tape and my sunglasses placed on top. I was then led gently to a car outside. The night air felt cool and refreshing and I tried to keep my euphoria in check - reminding myself that it was not over yet.
However, by the time we had driven several kilometres and my escorts led me inside a new house, I felt certain that I had been saved. The glasses were taken off and the tape removed. I found myself in a clean home sitting on a bed looking at three smiling Arabs. My guards from the other house were in the doorway and one of them waved his hand in a fluttering motion, smiled and said, "Free.... Bye, bye." The door shut behind them and all of a sudden the three Arabs stopped smiling. The big man standing in the centre of the room strode towards me pulling a pair of handcuffs from behind his back. The nightmare started all over.
--
They cuffed my hands behind my back and instructed me to sleep. Two of them slept in the same room as me - armed with pistols - while the home owner had taken the precaution of padlocking us in. It proved impossible to sleep with my arms pinned back like that and after two hours I felt stabbing pain in my shoulders. In an attempt to alleviate the pressure, I tried to sit up on the edge of the bed. Startled by my movement, one of the Arabs put his pistol to my forehead and motioned for me to lie back down. For the next six hours I could do nothing but try to block out the pain.
The following morning it became clear that instead of taking me to a 'safe' house en route to freedom, I had been transferred to yet another fundamentalist faction. At about 10 a.m. I was 'prepped' for my new interrogation by having my feet and hands chained to the bed and my eyes once again taped firmly shut. I estimated that at least three additional terrorists entered the room and began talking with my guards. Anticipating yet another beating, I fought to control my fear. One man simply stated in excellent English, "We know that you are a Mossad spy". As I started to protest he interrupted me, "Don't waste your breath. You have 24 hours to decide whether to tell the truth and die with a clear conscience... or go to your death as a liar. That is your choice. Think it over." With that said, the newcomers promptly left the house.
I spent that entire day chained to the bed and for the most part blindfolded. As a gesture of compassion they would occasionally free my eyes so that I could watch the television. All the programming was focused on the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. It was September 11th, and I was tied to a bed in an al-Qaeda cell house in Iraq. I felt my fate was truly sealed.
With so many hours to once again contemplate my own death I began to think of all the practical aspects which would be attendant upon my demise. My family would now by informed of my capture/death by Zeynep Tugrul - if indeed she had been released - so my thoughts drifted to things such as "How would they repatriate the body?", "Was there a process for moving corpses out of Iraq?", "Who would take care of the funeral arrangements?" etc.
That evening I was once again asked what I would prefer as my 'final meal'. After arguing, again, that my appetite wasn't exactly stimulated by my imminent death, I asked for a roast chicken. When the food arrived, they kept one of my hands tied to the bed and kept a pistol to the back of my head. It seemed they were taking no chances in letting me escape execution. It was only 9 p.m. - just 11 hours after they first came, not the promised 24 - when the three other terrorists returned. I did not feel cheated out of the time, as I was actually dreading the thought of another night of agony in the handcuffs. I had made my peace with God and if necessary, I was prepared to die. Another 13 hours of mental anguish was not necessary.
As soon as everyone was settled around my bed, the interrogator said that I did not have to fear any torture as this round of questioning would be far more straightforward. "It is either life or knife - with each answer that you give us," he said, "So please relax." For over one hour I carefully answered all their questions - careful to avoid the obvious traps. For instance, when asked, "Have you ever visited the State of Israel?" I answered, "No, I have never been to the occupied State of Palestine".
I have no idea whether or not my answers were convincing - in fact, I suspect that the decision to release me had already been made at some high level - but during one of my lengthy replies, the interrogator suddenly said, "Stop. Get your things. You will live. You are free".
Once the handcuffs were removed, I was handed my shoes and jacket and it seemed as though they were the ones anxious to be rid of me. Still with my eyes taped shut, I was driven to a highway where one of the guards flagged down a passing taxi. Another man ripped the tape off my eyes, pushed 10,000 dinars ($6 U.S.) into my shirt pocket and pushed me head first into the back of the cab.
I was free.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechen Accused in School Siege Takes Responsibility in Web Posting
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28453-2004Sep17.html
MOSCOW, Sept. 17 -- In an Internet posting, a Chechen rebel leader with a $10 million bounty on his head has apparently asserted responsibility for the Beslan school siege and threatened more attacks on Russian civilians if Chechnya is not granted independence.
The defiant, taunting and rambling missive, allegedly written by Shamil Basayev, whom Russian authorities have blamed for the massacre, offered the guerrilla's version of events in southern Russia early this month in which 338 people, many of them children, were killed. It expressed some passing regret at the loss of life, which the posting blamed on President Vladimir Putin.
Shamil Basayev had been accused by Russia of directing the Beslan school seizure.
"The Kremlin vampire destroyed and wounded 1,000 children and adults by giving the order to storm the school for the sake of imperial ambitions," the message stated. It bore the signature Abdallakh Shamil, an alias previously used by Basayev.
"We are sorry about what happened in Beslan," the message said. "It's simply that the war, which Putin declared on us five years ago, which has destroyed more than 40,000 Chechen children and crippled more than 5,000 of them, has gone back to where it started."
The message also asserted responsibility for the downing of two Russian airliners and a bombing outside a Moscow subway station in late August. In all, the recent attacks have killed more than 400 people.
The statement was posted Friday on a separatist-oriented Web site called Kavkaz-Center, based in Lithuania. After a meeting of the Lithuanian government, Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said the site would be closed.
Russian officials said the posting was no surprise. "Basayev once again demonstrated his true face, the face of a terrorist and murderer who will stop at nothing, even mass death for schoolchildren," Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for Russian forces in the North Caucasus region, told the Russian news agency Interfax.
Basayev, 39, was one of the republic's most feared guerrillas during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. After Russian forces withdrew from the republic at the end of that conflict in 1996, he became deputy prime minister in a Chechen government.
War resumed in 1999, and he is alleged to have organized some of the most notorious attacks of recent years, including the 2002 siege of a theater in Moscow.
After the Beslan siege, Russia offered a $10 million reward for Basayev's capture or killing and put a $10 million bounty on Aslan Maskhadov, the former Chechen president, who condemned the seizure of the school in Beslan.
At an international conference of mayors in Moscow on Friday, Putin reaffirmed his refusal to negotiate with the Chechens and said "we in Russia are engaged in serious preparations at the moment to act against terrorists in a preventive manner."
The Basayev message said the massacre at the school began because Islamic fighters inside "made a fatal mistake" by allowing a Russian emergency services vehicle onto school grounds to remove bodies of people killed on Sept. 1, the first day of the siege.
Russian troops used the pickup as cover to enter the school grounds, the message asserted. Two hostage-takers who had come outside to observe the removal of the bodies were killed by the troops, who triggered an explosion inside the school and began a full-scale assault, according to the posting.
The message said the guerrillas had deployed 20 mines inside the school, connected in one electronic circuit. "I personally trained this group in a forest, and I tested this system," the message said. "Either all bombs would have exploded or not a single one," but none detonated, the message said.
Suggesting that the victims were killed by Russian bombs, the message said: "We suggest that independent experts should check the fragments and types of wounds."
Numerous survivors of the siege have said that the first explosion occurred inside the gym and was caused by one of the guerrillas' devices. Russian officials said that blast triggered a firefight and bloody inferno as hostages fled the building and unprepared troops were forced to attack. By official count, 338 people were killed.
The message asserted that the hostages would have been freed if the Russians had withdrawn from Chechnya or if Putin had resigned.
The message said there were 33 hostage takers, mostly Chechens and Ingush, but also two Arabs, confirming Russian statements that Arabs were present, but not the 10 they originally asserted.
The message continued: "I don't know Bin Laden, don't receive any money from him, but would not mind." The message said little financing comes from abroad. The school siege cost about 8,000 euros (about $9,800) to mount, it said, adding that the weaponry used had been stolen from Russian forces or, as the message put it, "deducted from the Russian budget."
--------
Putin Says Russia to Strike Terrorists
September 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Chechnya.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is preparing for pre-emptive strikes against terrorists, as Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for a school hostage-taking and other terror attacks in Russia that have claimed more than 430 lives.
Speaking to a meeting of world mayors in Moscow on Friday, Putin also made a veiled attack on the West, saying that double standards in dealing with terrorism are ``disastrous for global security.''
Putin didn't name specific countries, but his comments appeared to be aimed against European and U.S. officials who have urged Moscow to conduct peace talks with Chechen rebels.
``There continue to be attempts to divide terrorists into 'ours and others,' into 'moderates and radicals,''' Putin said in televised remarks. ``All this is a condescending, justifying attitude to murders, which amounts to being an accomplice to terrorism.''
Putin firmly ruled out any ``bargaining'' with terrorists. ``Every concession leads to aggression, a widening of their demands and multiplies the losses,'' Putin said.
He said that ``now in Russia, we are seriously preparing to act preventively against terrorists,'' adding that such action would be ``in strict accordance with the law and norms of the constitution, norms of international law.''
Putin didn't elaborate, and it wasn't immediately clear whether he was referring to action against terrorists only at home or abroad as well. Lower-level officials, including Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, have said that Russia could conduct pre-emptive strikes against terrorists abroad, saying such action could involve any weapons except nuclear.
Putin's statement came as the main Chechen rebel Web site, Kavkaz-Center, posted what it said was an e-mail from Basayev, saying that his ``Riyadus Salikhin Martyrs' Brigade'' was responsible for the near-simultaneous bombings of two passenger jets last month, a suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station and the school hostage-taking in Beslan that ended in a hail of gunfire and explosions.
More than 430 people were killed in the attacks, with some 338 of those deaths coming during the seizure of the school.
The lengthy e-mail, signed with Basayev's nom de guerre, Abdallakh Shamil, defended the attacks as part of the Chechen war for independence against Russia. At the same time, Basayev sought to shift blame for the bloodshed at the school, saying the deaths were caused by a Russian attempt to storm the school.
Putin and other officials said repeatedly that they had not planned to storm the school, where the attackers had rigged bombs surrounding the approximately 1,200 hostages. According to Russian officials and witnesses, after explosions rocked the school and armed volunteers started shooting, the special forces opened fire, too.
Basayev's e-mail disputed that. ``We declare that the Russian special services stormed the school, (and that) it was planned from the very beginning,'' it said.
It alleged that Emergency Situations Ministry workers who entered the school to purportedly collect bodies of hostages who had been killed early in the crisis were in fact security officers, and that the explosions rang out only after those workers had yelled ``Run out!'' to the hostages.
The letter said the attackers' promised to give hostages water if Putin decreed an end to fighting in Chechnya, the return of troops to their barracks and a troop withdrawal. And if the troops were really being withdrawn, they would have given them food, the letter said.
``As soon as the troops are withdrawn from the mountains, we will let children up to age 10 go, the rest after the full troop withdrawal,'' it said of the attackers' conditions.
If Putin had resigned, the attackers would have freed all the children and left for Chechnya with the rest of the hostages, the e-mail said. It also cited Basayev's letter to Putin, which offered peace in exchange for the Kremlin's recognition of Chechnya's independence.
It was impossible to confirm whether the letter was genuine, but the Web site has long served as a mouthpiece for Basayev and has carried his previous claims of responsibility.
Alexander Ignatenko, an independent expert on Islamic militant groups, said that the letter appeared to be Basayev's response to global condemnation of the school seizure.
``He is afraid of losing support even in the Islamic countries,'' Ignatenko said in a telephone interview. ``He wants to shift blame to the Russian authorities.''
In his letter, Basayev sought to cast the school attack as rightful vengeance for alleged Russian atrocities in Chechnya.
``We regret what happened in Beslan. It's simply that the war, which Putin declared on us five years ago, which has destroyed more than 40,000 Chechen children and crippled more than 5,000 of them, has gone back to where it started,'' he wrote.
Casualty figures in Chechnya vary widely, though many estimates say about 80,000 civilians -- 40 percent of them children -- died in the first Chechen war. Countless more have been killed since the conflict exploded again in 1999.
In his letter, Basayev, whom the U.S. State Department last year declared a threat to the United States, also denied Russian claims that he receives money from Osama bin Laden.
Basayev said he had received only US$10,000 (euro8,192) and euro8,000 (US$9,766) from abroad this year. ``I am not acquainted with bin Laden,'' Basayev said. ``I don't receive money from him but would not refuse it.''
Basayev's e-mail said that the 33 attackers at the Beslan school included 10 Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three ethnic Russians, two Arabs, and five other Russian citizens from various ethnic groups. Russian authorities have said there were 32 attackers, all but one of whom had been killed. One was captured and is giving evidence.
The e-mail said Basayev personally trained the attackers for 10 days in a forest outside the village of Batako-Yurt, 12 miles from Beslan. He identified the group's leader as ``Col. Orstkhoyev'' and denied any of the fighters had objected when they found out children would be among the hostages.
Russian Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Kolesnikov said Friday that the leader of the attackers, nicknamed ``Colonel,'' had been identified as Ruslan Khochubarov, a native of Chechnya, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reacted to Basayev's statement by saying that ``we had little doubt that he was involved in these terrorist acts.''
``The fact that he took full responsibility of course does not mean that by liquidating the problem that exists in connection with Basayev, all the rest will disappear,'' Lavrov said. ``Of course, this is part of international terrorism.''
The Federal Security Service's spokesman in Chechnya, Maj.-Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, said that the agency had detained an Algerian mercenary, identified as Kamal Urakhli, who had served as an explosives expert in Basayev's group. Urakhli lived in Britain for about 10 years, he said in remarks broadcast on Russian television.
-------- spies
U.S. intelligence fiascoes
September 18, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40500
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush threw down the gauntlet before Iraq, North Korea and Iran:
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
Bush-Cheney have since claimed to have "intelligence" that Iraq, North Korea and Iran - all no-nuke signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - each had illicit nuke development programs.
Each country has vehemently denied it, demanding that the "intelligence" be provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency for verification or refutation.
During the Cold War, when we were spending a zillion dollars a year collecting "intelligence" from outer space, the rest of the world took us at our word. After all, we regularly intercepted phone calls Chairman Breshnev made from his limousine and tracked the limousine's movements.
Well, we are still spending a zillion dollars a year, but by now hardly anyone takes us at our word.
Everyone now knows that the real Bush-Cheney objective along the "axis of evil" has been regime change.
In October 2002, Bush-Cheney submitted the National Intelligence Estimate entitled "Iraq's Continuing Programs of Weapons of Mass Destruction" that formed the basis for the congressional "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq."
Bush then took his "intelligence" to the U.N. Security Council, seeking their authorization, too. But the Security Council balked, sending inspectors into Iraq to check out Bush's "intelligence." By mid-March it was obvious that there were no "continuing" WMD programs in Iraq. Virtually the entire NIE had been wrong.
Well, what about the CIA "assessments" of North Korean nukes?
In October, 2002, a Bush-Cheney weenie claimed that a North Korean diplomat told him at a cocktail party they had a secret uranium-enrichment program.
North Korean officials immediately and vehemently denied it. All North Korean nuclear programs had been "frozen" - subject to IAEA lock, seal and continuous surveillance - by the Agreed Framework of 1994.
Bush-Cheney ought then to have provided - as we were obligated to do - the IAEA the "intelligence" that formed the basis for the charge so the IAEA could check it out.
Instead, Bush-Cheney used the cocktail party "admission" as the basis for unilaterally abrogating the Agreed Framework, immediately shutting off the U.S. fuel-oil shipments to Korea required by it.
By December, it was obvious that Bush-Cheney were going to invade Iraq no matter what the IAEA inspectors found or didn't find. Furthermore, North Korea might be next. So, the Koreans asked their IAEA inspectors to leave, announced they were withdrawing from the NPT, restarted their "frozen" nuclear power plant and began recovering the weapons-grade plutonium contained in their "frozen" spent-fuel elements.
They now have enough weapons-grade plutonium to make a half dozen nukes, and the CIA assesses that they probably have one or two ready to test.
How good is that CIA assessment? Well, the North Koreans don't deny it.
But the Koreans still do adamantly deny the CIA assessment that they have - or ever have had - a uranium-enrichment program.
The Chinese tend to believe the Koreans, not the CIA. Now that North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT, and doesn't deny having a plutonium-nuke program, there is no reason to deny having a uranium-nuke program.
How about Iran?
Well, last year Iran agreed to submit to essentially the same full-disclosure unlimited-access IAEA Safeguards regime that Iraq had agreed to a year earlier. As of this writing, the IAEA has found no "indication" that Iran is pursuing - or ever has pursued - a nuke development program.
The IAEA did find such indications in Iraq, South Africa and North Korea in 1991-92, so they do know what to look for.
Nevertheless, Bush wants the IAEA to refer to the U.N. Security Council for possible punitive action the nuke program the IAEA says Iran doesn't have. On this issue, the Brits-French-Germans-Russians-Chinese tend to believe the IAEA, not Bush.
Meanwhile, the CIA reported a mushroom-shaped cloud last week near where they were expecting North Korea to test a nuke. Well, according to the DPRK news service:
"There has been no such accident or explosion in the DPRK recently. Probably, plot-breeders might tell such a sheer lie, taken aback by blastings at construction sites of hydro-power stations in the north of Korea."
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- us
UN Council Votes for Resolution on Darfur Abuses
September 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-sudan-darfur-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Saturday that threatens oil sanctions against Sudan if Khartoum does not stop atrocities in the Darfur region.
The vote was 11-0, with four abstentions, on the U.S.-drafted resolution that also calls for an expanded African Union monitoring force and a probe into human rights abuses including genocide.
China, Russia, Algeria and Pakistan abstained. China earlier threatened to veto the measure and its U.N. envoy, Wang Guangya, consulted with U.S. Ambassador John Danforth until the last minute.
``We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,'' Wang told reporters before the vote.
The resolution says Sudan has to cooperate with an expanded African Union monitoring mission in Darfur, where an estimated 50,000 people have been killed and 1.2 million forced out of their homes. U.N. officials hope at least 3,000 African Union monitors and troops go to Darfur to investigate and serve as a bulwark against abuses.
It also calls for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to set up a commission that would investigate human rights abuses and determine if genocide had occurred, as the United States believes it has, in the western Sudanese region where Arab militia have been terrorizing African villagers.
``We act today because the Government of Sudan has failed to fully comply with out previous resolution, adopted on July 30,'' Danforth said. ``The crisis in Darfur is uniquely grave. It is the largest humanitarian disaster in the world.
SECURITY AGREEMENT
The latest version before the council urges African rebels and all other parties to the faltering African Union negotiations to sign an agreement on security quickly.
Rebels began an uprising in Darfur in February 2003 after years of skirmishes between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over land and water in the area as large as France.
The government turned to the militia, drawn chiefly from the nomadic Arab population, to help suppress the rebels but the Janjaweed, often backed by government forces, escalated the conflict, raping villagers and pillaging.
Over the past week, the United States softened language on sanctions and eliminated a call for Sudan to stop all military flights over Darfur.
But the resolution retains the main action points: a threat of sanctions, a commission to investigate the possibility of genocide and an expanded African Union monitoring force U.S. and U.N. officials hope will reach some 3,000 troops and observers and serve as a bulwark to further abuse.
Specifically, the resolution says that if Sudan does not comply with its demands or cooperate ``with the expansion and extension'' of the African Union mission, the council ``shall consider taking additional measures ... such as actions to affect Sudan's petroleum sector and the Government of Sudan or individual members of the Government of Sudan.''
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
House GOP Leaders Back Creating Intelligence Chief
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29869-2004Sep17.html
Creation of a national intelligence director who would wield broader powers than the CIA chief enjoys -- a key recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission -- drew close to fruition yesterday as House Republican leaders signaled they will join Senate leaders and the White House in embracing the idea.
But President Bush and House leaders favor narrower budgetary and planning powers for the director, possibly setting up a clash next month with senators and commission supporters.
For weeks, House GOP leaders had stressed their independent approach to the commission's recommendations. They said they had plenty of experts within their chamber and ridiculed Democrats who suggested that the commission's approximately 40 proposals should be enacted with few questions.
But yesterday -- one day after the White House submitted language calling for the national intelligence director and other government changes -- Majority Leader Tom DeLay's spokesman, Stuart Roy, said the House will introduce a bill next week that "will largely track the president's proposal."
Plenty of issues remain unresolved. Powerful lawmakers are resisting the commission's main recommendations to revamp congressional oversight of intelligence and security matters. Bush and House leaders oppose the panel's call for disclosing how much the government spends on intelligence efforts.
With the House and Senate moving on separate paths, and a proposed adjournment three weeks away, lawmakers yesterday said it is unclear how many proposals might be enacted before the Nov. 2 elections. Democrats, especially in the House, have accused Republicans of resisting the commission's work at nearly every step.
A bipartisan Senate bill introduced Wednesday generally tracks the commission's proposals in several areas, including the creation of an intelligence director with authority over budgets and personnel for much of the nation's intelligence community. The White House on Thursday sent lawmakers 23 pages of proposed legislative language that also embraces a national intelligence director, albeit with somewhat narrower powers.
For example, the White House plan would continue funneling most intelligence funding through the Pentagon, whereas the Senate bill would send such funds to the intelligence director unless they are designated for the military, according to a GOP staff analysis.
The Senate bill would authorize the proposed national counterterrorism center to prepare plans for, but not directly implement, multi-agency operations to fight terrorism, according to the analysis. The White House plan would limit the center to strategic, not operational, planning.
The White House, backed by House leaders, also wants to keep classified the amount that the government spends on intelligence operations. That number -- frequently estimated at about $40 billion annually in news accounts -- should be made public, according to the Sept. 11 commission and the Senate bill, which is sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.).
Their bill also would authorize the intelligence director to establish "national intelligence centers" to "integrate capabilities from across the intelligence community." The White House's plan would not.
"The administration's bill is not as comprehensive as the proposal we have already announced," Collins and Lieberman said in a statement, "but it nevertheless helps to maintain momentum toward getting comprehensive intelligence reform accomplished this year."
Neither chamber has acted on another major commission recommendation: revamping congressional oversight of intelligence and anti-terrorism operations. House GOP leadership aides, speaking on background yesterday because their bosses have not announced final decisions, said there is heavy resistance to each of the commission's chief proposals in that area.
One proposal is to combine the Senate and House intelligence committees into one panel. Other proposals would make membership in the intelligence committees permanent, not term-limited; reduce the size of the committees; and give the committees both authorizing and appropriating powers. Authorization and appropriations are handled by separate committees, which guard their turf zealously.
House leaders, a well-placed aide said, believe it is better "to democratize the oversight process than to concentrate it in a few people's hands." In the Senate, a bipartisan, 22-member task force is weighing recommendations for revamping legislative oversight, which the Sept. 11 commission portrayed as highly important.
The unresolved issues notwithstanding, this week's momentum for creating a national intelligence director and counterterrorism center marks a significant leap in the commission's fortunes. When the panel released a 567-page report in July, Bush committed to no timetable for considering its many recommendations, and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) agreed only to hold hearings "over the next several months."
Pressured by commission members, Democrats and others, however, Congress held hearings throughout August and began drafting legislation to reshape the executive branch's intelligence-related operations, though not those of Congress. Now the House, Senate and White House are negotiating at the margins, not the heart, of the commission's call for a national intelligence director and counterterrorism center.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Parallels Drawn Between CBS Memos, Texan's Postings
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30043-2004Sep17.html
The former Texas National Guard officer suspected of providing CBS News with possibly forged records on President Bush's military service called on Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks" in a series of Internet postings in which he also used phrases similar to several employed in the disputed documents.
Retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who earlier said he overheard Bush aides conspiring with the commander of the Texas National Guard to "sanitize" the president's military records, has refused to comment on reports that he could be CBS's confidential source. In e-mails yesterday to The Washington Post, he said he would speak out "at the appropriate time" but "that time is not now."
In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed "down and dirty" tactics against Bush. He said that he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee but that the DNC seemed "afraid to do what I suggest."
In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance knowledge of some details in an explosive segment that aired Sept. 8 on CBS's "60 Minutes." In addition to airing footage of an interview with former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes saying he helped Bush get into the Guard, the network broadcast documents purporting to show that Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical required to continue flying in the spring of 1972.
"I believe that Bush knows that there is more coming out than Ben Barnes," Burkett wrote. "No proof, just gut instinct."
In another development, the Los Angeles Times reported that an Atlanta lawyer with conservative Republican connections posted the first Web log entry questioning the authenticity of the CBS documents less than four hours after the initial broadcast on "60 Minutes." The paper identified Harry W. MacDougald as the "Buckhead," who became a hero of conservative Web sites after pointing out technical problems with the documents, such as fonts and proportionate spacing.
MacDougald declined to say how he learned about the problems with the documents so early. In addition to being released by CBS, copies of the documents were e-mailed by the White House to reporters as "60 Minutes" went on the air.
For his part, Burkett said in an Aug. 25 posting to a different Web site, Online Journal, that he and other researchers had "reassembled" files showing that Bush did not fulfill his oath to obey his superior officers. It was not clear from the context of the message, however, whether he was referring to records that have dribbled out of the White House and the Pentagon in response to Freedom of Information Act requests or to previously unpublished documents.
Yesterday, the Pentagon released more records of Bush's service with the Texas National Guard, two days after a Texas Guard official told The Post that no new documents had been discovered. The records showed that Bush's father, who was then a Republican congressman from Houston, thanked his son's commander for taking a personal "interest in a brand new Air Force trainee."
Burkett, who worked at the Austin headquarters of the Texas Guard before his retirement in 1998, has said he saw some of the younger Bush's records in a trash can when Bush was preparing to run for reelection as governor of Texas. Guard officials have called his assertion fictitious.
CBS News has refused to identify the person who provided "60 Minutes" with records purporting to show that Bush received preferential treatment from his commanders when he moved from Texas to Alabama in 1972 to take part in a political campaign and was suspended from flying for failing to take a physical. But in an interview published yesterday in the New York Observer, CBS News anchor Dan Rather gave details about his source that fit with known details about Burkett.
Rather described his source as a man who said he, along with his family, has been harassed and threatened by political operatives. In interviews with journalists over the past few years, Burkett complained about receiving threatening phone calls at home, as well as a bullet with his name on it in his mailbox.
Another retired Guard officer who was interviewed for "60 Minutes," Robert Strong, said earlier this week that Rather showed him copies of new Guard records on Bush that bore markings showing that they had been faxed from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., 21 miles from Burkett's home in Baird.
The CBS documents include several phrases that crop up in Web logs signed by Burkett, including "run interference," and references to a pilot's "billet." Former Air National Guard officers have pointed out that "billet" is an Army expression, not an Air Force one. Burkett has also used the expression "cover your six," a military variant of the vulgar abbreviation "CYA," which appears in one of the CBS documents.
In an Aug. 21 posting, Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back."
Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had "valuable" information about Bush, and asking what he should with it. "I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign," Cleland said. "You get this information tens of times a day, and you don't know if it is legit or not."
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Cites Hussein's Potential Weapons
Officials Echo Draft Of Iraq Survey Group
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29996-2004Sep17.html
President Bush and other senior administration officials yesterday defended their decision to invade Iraq despite errors in prewar intelligence, echoing the findings in a draft report by the top U.S. weapons inspector, who concludes that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction but hoped to someday reconstitute programs to develop them.
"We didn't find the stockpiles we thought would be there -- that we all thought would be there," Bush said at a campaign rally in Washington. "But Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons, and he could have passed that capability on to the enemy. And that is a risk we could not afford to take after September 11, 2001. Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision."
Defending his Iraq policy, President Bush said, "Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons, and he could have passed that capability on to the enemy." (Ron Edmonds -- AP)
The 1,300-page draft report by Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA's top adviser on Iraqi weapons and the leader of the Iraq Survey Group, has been reviewed by acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin, according to one U.S. intelligence official. McLaughlin asked the team to answer questions not addressed in the report and has sent it back for further work. The official said the team has thousands of boxes of documents that it has yet to read, so changes are possible. The draft conclusion of Hussein's intent was based largely on documents written by senior Iraqi leaders and on interviews with former Iraqi scientists and top officials, the official said.
U.S. officials familiar with the classified draft report, whose contents were first reported by the Associated Press Thursday night, said it broadly mirrors the findings of Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay. Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January that the U.S. intelligence community was "all wrong" in concluding that Iraq possessed banned weapons, a finding that the administration had used as a primary public justification for the invasion.
"Our view is it's going to largely confirm what David Kay concluded, which is that no stockpile existed but there was a clear capability and clear intent," said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the unfinished report has not been released.
The draft report also provides additional details on weapons programs that were never detected by U.N. inspectors, including a clandestine network of Iraqi intelligence agency facilities that were capable of producing small quantities of lethal agents and a secret program to develop drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, at the country's Al-Rashid air force base. Sources said the report is expected to include new information on Iraq's effort to secretly import a range of equipment, including lab equipment and machine tools that could be used in a weapons program.
"I think the report is absolutely consistent with what I said in January and in October last year," Kay said yesterday, adding that he has not seen the report but has discussed the probe with members of Duelfer's team. "No weapons stockpiles of mass destruction present at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Saddam himself had absolutely every intention of reestablishing these programs at some point in the future."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview on Fox News Channel yesterday that, although he had not yet read Duelfer's report, "if I had money to put money on something, I would say that Saddam Hussein clearly had the intention of having such weapons, he had the capability of having such weapons, and if he had ever broken free of U.N. sanctions or international oversight, he would have built up stockpiles."
"My instinct right now says that the sources that we had were mistaken with respect to the existence of any significant stockpiles," Powell added. "We haven't found any, and I haven't seen a persuasive case that said they've all been buried or they all went to another country."
Kay, however, challenged the Bush administration's contention that Iraq's weapons program presented a dire threat to the United States. He said that Iraq's "dual-use" chemical and industrial infrastructure -- which Iraq once used to produce chemical and biological weapons -- had been so degraded by war, U.N. inspections and economic sanctions that it is "dubious" to assume it could have been swiftly readied for the large-scale production of lethal agents.
He said Iraq had "gone to great lengths to conceal" the secret weapons labs currently under investigation by Duelfer's team. He noted that the labs "could have produced small quantities of biological or chemical agents but nothing significant from a military point of view."
He also voiced skepticism that the Iraqi drones could be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons, saying they were simply too small for that purpose. The Bush administration cited the threat that Iraqi drones could be used in such attacks on U.S. cities in making its case for invading Iraq. U.S. Air Force analysts and U.N. weapons inspectors have challenged those claims, saying that Iraq's drones were likely being developed to conduct reconnaissance missions.
Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report.
-------- us politics
Interview with Secretary Colin L. Powell
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gestures during a sit down interview with members of the news media at the State Department in Washington September 14, 2004.
By Barry Schweid and George Gedda,
September 18, 2004
Petroleum World
http://www.petroleumworld.com/sati091804.htm
MR. SCHWEID: 9/11, an anniversary at hand again. Is America safer now, do you think, than it has been?
SECRETARY POWELL: 9/11 was a great tragedy for our nation. It was a great tragedy for the world. I am pleased to say that we have not seen another incident, anything like 9/11. We've not been struck by terrorists since 9/11, so certainly the last three years have been an indication that we are safer.
But we are still in a threatening environment. There are still people who want to strike the United States. As a result of the President's effort and his leadership, we have put in place a Homeland Security Department, we have tightened up our borders, we have a better idea who's coming into the country. We know how to use the information that we get to raise alert levels and take other precautions that protect our nation.
And so, in that regard, we are safer, I believe. We are also safer in that we have eliminated the Taliban as a functioning group in Afghanistan. We have a government that is getting ready for presidential elections in Afghanistan coming up on the 9th of October. And al-Qaida no longer finds safe haven in that part of the world. Iraq has seen a dictator removed and it is no longer a source of that kind of activity, even though we still have challenges there. So, in that sense, I think we are safer.
At the same time, the world has to continue to fight terrorism. We see terrorism in places like Beslan in Russia. We see what happened in Jakarta the other day, a bomb against the Australian Embassy. So while I think the nation clearly is safer, we have to remain vigilant and we have to realize that there are people out there who mean us ill, and they have to be fought and they have to be defeated.
MR. SCHWEID: It's obviously a worldwide problem, but is -- many, many years ago, and she was virtually laughed at by think-tankers, Claire Sterling wrote many, many years ago about the notion of a network of terrorists, that it really is -- that they're interlocked, they're interlaced. Do you --
SECRETARY POWELL: Some clearly are interlocked. I mean, al-Qaida is a worldwide organization and JI is active in Asia and other parts of the world. What we want to make sure is that they don't become any more interlocked than they might be now. And that's why we focus not only just on military action and police action, but law enforcement, financial activities, getting into their information networks, their financial network, computer networks. Any means by which they might connect with one another, we are after to make sure that it doesn't become that kind of worldwide network.
MR. SCHWEID: What are they after, besides chaos and hurting people?
SECRETARY POWELL: They are after, first and foremost, making a statement through the destruction and killing of innocent people. And they have abandoned civilized means of making your opinion known. They reject democracy, they reject openness and they resort to the killing of innocent people.
There can be no justification for what happened in Russia the other day, last week, where young students on the their first day of school, showing up with flowers and pencil boxes to learn, suddenly are put at risk and then are killed by the hundreds. There's no excuse for that. There can be no political justification. There is no religious justification. This is evil and terror staring us right in the face and it's the kind of evil and terror that we saw perpetrated against us three years ago on 9/11. And it must be fought. It must be resisted. There can be no compromise in this battle.
MR. GEDDA: Bin Laden's face has not been seen on television since 2001. I don't know whether you would attach any significance to that. You have no inkling as to why almost three years have passed since he has appeared?
SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't know why. I don't know where he is and I don't know his state of health. I don't know. We believe he is still alive. I can't prove that. But he clearly is hiding as best he can. He is on the run. He is not popping up on television and he is not showing himself in a way that he could be captured. The whole world is after him for being a criminal and for being a terrorist and for being a murderer, so he is doing everything he can to stay hidden.
MR. GEDDA: How much of a difference would his death or capture make?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know. We have done a great deal of damage to the al-Qaida network. A large percentage of the senior leadership of al-Qaida has been killed or captured. But it does have the capacity to regenerate itself at lower levels, but they are not as accomplished and experienced as those who have been taken out.
If he were to be taken out, would that destroy al-Qaida? I think it would be a very, very serious blow against al-Qaida. I cannot tell you, though, that there would not be others who would try to take his place. But the top leadership of al-Qaida has been very badly damaged through capture and death over the last three years.
MR. GEDDA: You mentioned Russia. They have taken exception to some things that have been said from this building. Mr. Lavrov said, "We solve our internal problems ourselves and there's no need to search for an American route to political normalization in Chechnya."
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we didn't suggest any American route to political normalization of Chechnya. I think the Russians are concerned that a Chechen was able to gain asylum here through our judicial system some years back, and Mr. Lavrov made a specific reference to that individual and another individual who was able, through the judicial system in the United Kingdom, to gain asylum. But that's part of our judicial system.
We are fully united and standing alongside the Russians as they deal with the terrorist threat that they face and the terrorist strike that was perpetrated against their innocent citizens last week. And that's what they also heard clearly enunciated by the State Department and there's no confusion here.
How this problem of Chechnya will ultimately be solved is something for the Russians to work out, but with respect to terrorist attacks against innocent Russians, we stand united with the Russians that they have to deal with this in the most powerful, direct, forceful way that they can in order to protect their citizens, the same as we are doing to protect our citizens.
MR. SCHWEID: Do we know yet who was involved, whether it was Chechen, all Chechen, al-Qaida?
SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't, and that's something we really should let the Russians determine and make appropriate announcements about.
MR. SCHWEID: Can I ask you about Korea? The South Korean -- the disclosures about South Korean experiments and even traces of plutonium from 20 years ago. Is this going to make your job of getting North Korea to cooperate even harder?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I think the North Koreans will seize on it, they have seized on it, but it's pretty obvious that these were not significant events. One took place 20 years ago of an experimental nature, the one dealing with plutonium. The one dealing with uranium happened about four years ago. But it's quite clear that these were not intended other than for academic, experimental purposes, and it's over with and I think that's, frankly, the end of the matter. I don't see any great significance to them, but the North Koreans always like to seize on anything to make their point.
MR. SCHWEID: You still haven't -- not that you actually have to announce a date this early in September, but we don't hear a date for the resumption.
SECRETARY POWELL: We don't have a date yet. Assistant Secretary Kelly is in the region consulting with our friends in the region, and we will see whether a date emerges from these consultations.
We have laid out a very strong position, a very flexible position, a position that makes it clear we have no intention of invading or attacking North Korea, we have no hostile intent. But we do insist, as do the other members of the six-party group that we have put together, we do insist that we move toward the denuclearization of the peninsula in a very, very complete and verifiable way.
The North Koreans understand that this has to be the case, and the Japanese and South Koreans have offered initial incentives in the form of energy assistance to the North Koreans to get started on this process. We are interested in participating in the writing of a security agreement that the North Koreans can see as evidence of our policy and we are waiting for the North Koreans to respond to this. North Korea is a country in need. The President has, many times, expressed his concern about the North Korean people. And, hopefully, the North Koreans will understand that there is no point in waiting or stretching this out; let's get started.
MR. GEDDA: Iraq question. You talked to the Saudis, I don't know, six weeks ago, about their idea for a Muslim security force for Iraq. Where does that stand now?
SECRETARY POWELL: I haven't had any recent conversations with the Saudi Foreign Minister about it. I know that they have continued to consult with different Muslim countries, but I haven't talked to him recently about what progress he has made.
MR. GEDDA: You were enthusiastic about the Future of Iraq project two years ago. Almost nothing has been heard about it since then, and -- but you praised it at the time, you thought it was a good idea for the postwar reconstruction.
I hear it's gathering dust, the outcome of this. Are you disappointed in that it never seemed to be acted upon after the war?
SECRETARY POWELL:Well, the Future of Iraq study was a one-year effort led by the State Department, but it was an interagency effort. And we also brought in outsiders from think tanks, from universities and elsewhere, and it was a very good piece of work. It was made available to the Coalition Provisional Authority. It was made available to Mr. Jay Garner, General Jay Garner, before that. Parts of it have been used and that body of information is here. We're using it.
As you know, we have an office within our Near Eastern Bureau that is working closely with Ambassador Negroponte and many of the people in that office worked on the Future of Iraq study. So it still gives us insight as to things that have to be done with respect to reconstruction, with respect to the political process, and materials are available, both to the office here as well as to Ambassador Negroponte.
MR. SCHWEID: In Israel, the Foreign Minister is speaking of the time may be growing near to exile Arafat. I suppose that's an Israeli decision. But would that, in any way, help the situation?
SECRETARY POWELL:Well, I haven't heard that particular report. From time to time, you receive -- you hear statements from Israeli authorities as to what the future of Mr. Arafat should be or not be, and other statements come along a few days later. So I don't have any comment at this point. I hadn't heard about it.
MR. SCHWEID: Okay. Is there time left for you to have any impact on the stalemate, do you think?
SECRETARY POWELL:I and members of my Department and the President have stood ready, and members of the National Security Council have stood ready, to engage with the Israelis and the Palestinians at any time such an engagement would be appropriate and would make sense. We're working with the Israelis on the Gaza disengagement plan and the four settlements that would also be removed from the West Bank and other aspects of their settlement policy.
But what we need and what we don't have and what we have been struggling to obtain for the last year, since the President took the bold step of going to Aqaba and endorsing the roadmap and having everyone else endorse the roadmap, is the reform that's needed in the Palestinian Authority. We need to see the end of terror. We need to see the consolidation of Palestinian security forces under responsible leadership.
We need to have an empowered prime minister, and that requires taking authority and power away from Mr. Arafat and empowering a prime minister so he could act as head of government and get on with the process of reforming the administration of the Palestinian Authority, putting in place a solid security organization and getting ready for the Gaza disengagement.
MR. SCHWEID: That would seem to be part of any settlement -- necessary for any settlement. But is it necessary in order -- is it a prerequisite for the U.S. launching another drive? In other words, can you -- I know you're working on it -- but can you step up the drive even when the Palestinians are resisting?
SECRETARY POWELL:We've stepped up the drive repeatedly. We've stepped up the drive at the beginning of this Administration with the Mitchell Plan, the Tenet Plan, the Zinni Plan, multiple trips. In June of 2002, the President laid out a strong vision for a Palestinian state in a way that no president has done previously, but the President noted we needed a partner to work on this, and the partner had to be somebody besides Yasser Arafat.
We needed an empowered prime minister. We thought that we had made progress with that last year when the President went to Aqaba. And, frankly, most of that was undercut by Mr. Arafat. And so it's difficult to see how progress can be made without an empowered prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. But we stand ready. We are in touch with the parties. Assistant Secretary Burns goes there frequently. I am in touch with both sides on a regular basis. But we need to see -- we need to see movement. We just can't go moving back and forth, working with the same arrangement that has failed so many times in the past.
A good friend of mine, who worked on this for 12 years, Mr. Dennis Ross, has just written a book that makes the same point, that Mr. Arafat is not acting as a responsible partner for peace. And it is in the interest of the Palestinian people not to eliminate Mr. Arafat, but to empower a prime minister who can be a responsible partner for peace.
MR. SCHWEID: Yeah, he and Albright are going to hold forth on this subject at noon, by the way.
A quick question: Can the U.S. have good relations with Venezuela under Chavez? Is it possible?
SECRETARY POWELL:Well, we will have to see. We have concerns about some of the actions that President Chavez has taken over the years in pursuit of his vision of Bolivarian democracy. We want the Venezuelan people to do well. We are friends to the Venezuelan people. And now that the election, or the referendum, is over, we will just have to see how things develop.
MR. SCHWEID: Toward the end of an interview, there is always a bit of a hooker, but I hope you won't take it that way. Four years are drawing to a close. Have you felt that you had a role that was, as a lot of people see you as having, of being a moderating influence in an otherwise far more conservative, far more aggressive -- I can pick the words without looking for a word that isn't terribly charged -- but I think you know what my point is.
I talk to so many people who speak favorably, very favorably of you, and thank heavens that you're there, but they speak in terms of you having a stabilizing interest: going to the UN on Iraq and so many instances and positions you've taken on family planning, on, you know, quotas, on this affirmative action. Do you -- it's an awkward question, but I wonder if you want to deal with it at this point.
SECRETARY POWELL:Well, I have been given many labels in the course of my career and over the past four years. The only label that really sticks and is important is that I serve this nation and I serve the President. And my job is to help the President carry out his foreign policy objectives as he determines them to be.
And I believe he appreciates the advice I give. We have done a lot that, perhaps, doesn't get enough attention: the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation; the HIV/AIDS initiative; we were playing a -- played an instrumental role in creating the best relationship we've had with China in decades; a good relationship with Russia; expansion of NATO; working with the European Union to expand it and to work with the European Union to the point where it can take over some responsibilities from NATO in Europe.
I think we played a very instrumental role in helping the Indians and Pakistanis to begin talking to one another again. We have excellent relations with both of those countries and that's not where we started out a few years ago.
We have done a great deal with respect to free trade, open trade, expansion of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, expansion of regional trade agreements here, WTO accession. So I think we've done a great deal that is positive.
And we also did some things that people view as controversial, but I think they are positive. Two despotic regimes are gone, the one that was in Kabul and the one that was in Baghdad, and the world is better off for their departure, and their nations are better off for the departure of these two regimes.
We have challenging times ahead of us in order to consolidate our success there, to get rid of the insurgents both in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, in a few weeks' time, 20-odd million Afghans will have the opportunity of picking a new president in a democratic election. Imagine that, from just three years ago when the Taliban was in charge. And we are trying to accomplish the same mission for the people of Iraq, 25 million people in Iraq.
And the people who are trying to stop it -- stop the Iraqis, stop the Iraqi Government -- are left over from the past. They're terrorists, former regime elements that want to take Iraq back into the days of Saddam Hussein. And we will not let that happen. But, more importantly, I don't think the Iraqi people will let it happen. And so we're building up Iraqi forces to deal with that challenge just as we're building up Afghan forces to deal with the insurgency that still is, to an extent, slowing down the work in Afghanistan.
And guess what. People are turning out. They want to be part of this force. They want their country to move forward in this way. They don't want ex-Taliban or remnants of the Taliban or remnants of the former regime in Iraq to stop their progress.
MR. GEDDA:The President said in Philadelphia the other day he'd be happy to have you around beyond January 20th, assuming he's reelected. Do you have any reaction to that?
SECRETARY POWELL:Well, the President and I have a very strong, solid relationship and I'm pleased he would say such a thing, but you know my standard answer to this question: I serve at the pleasure.
MR. GEDDA:Well, it seems like it is his pleasure.
SECRETARY POWELL:Time will tell. We will see. There's no -- I don't serve a term. (Laughter.)
MR. GEDDA:How are we doing? One more?
MR. SCHWEID: One more quick one. Is there an area -- it would be the case, I suppose, with everybody -- is there an area -- you've dealt now heavily with what's going on in Sudan. Is there an area, is there an issue, is there a subject, in retrospect, you wished you had more time to focus on, perhaps couldn't because of other events? But is there -- the world "regret" comes to mind. I don't quite mean it that way. But is there something you wish you had had a little more time to deal with?
SECRETARY POWELL:Well, I still have time, Barry. (Laughter.)
MR. SCHWEID: Well, I know. We're not saying goodbye. We're not saying goodbye.
SECRETARY POWELL:Look, we have done so many things. What I've found in this job is that thereis no area you can ignore. It all comes to my office. And so some days it will be a major issue like Iraq or Sudan. The next day, it might just be flying to Greenland to sign a modest agreement or going to a Panamanian inauguration to show support for Panama. Not momentous actions on any grand scale, but part of the job of being Secretary of State.
So there is no issue I can't get involved in and I do get involved in. And the style that I have and the way the Department runs is, if it's somebody else's problem, then it's our problem. If somebody brings a problem to us because the United States can help with it, then we have a responsibility to help with it.
And we've been successful in a number of areas. We've dealt with Libya and disarmed it from its weapons of mass destruction. We played a very important role in Liberia, in helping it get rid of Charles Taylor. We did the same thing in Haiti, and now we are working to build up the UN force in Haiti so that the Haitian people have a better shot at a brighter future.
And so, sure, I always wish I had more time for the whole agenda, but we ignore no part of our agenda.
MR. SCHWEID: Thank you.
MR. GEDDA:Thanks. Appreciate it.
Colin Powell is U.S. Secretary of State. Barry Schweid and George Gedda are Associated Press journalists. Its views are not necessarily those of PETROLEUMWORLD.
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-------- ACTIVISTS
Yoko Ono gives peace prize to Mordechai Vanunu
Saturday 18th September 2004
(Reuters)
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3391
LONDON - Veteran peacenik, artist and musician Yoko Ono has given Mordechai Vanunu a peace prize founded in her late husband's memory, an award she hopes will keep the Israeli nuclear whistleblower safe.
Vanunu was barred by Israel's highest court in July from leaving the country, with judges ruling he remained a threat to national security despite serving 18 years in jail for leaking atomic secrets to a British newspaper.
Vanunu was abducted by Israeli agents and convicted of treason in 1986 after discussing his work as a nuclear technician with the Sunday Times.
His revelations led independent experts to conclude Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons - a superpower arsenal - and all but blew away the Jewish state's policy of "strategic ambiguity" over its non-conventional capabilities.
"It's possible that somebody might attempt to murder him, that's the main concern," Ono told Reuters in an interview to announce the award.
Supporters fear for Vanunu's safety in Israel, where most people despise him as a traitor and see the country's presumed nuclear capability as an insurance policy against numerically superior Middle East foes and a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust.
In an interview conducted by an Israeli intermediary and broadcast by the BBC in early June, Vanunu said he spoke out because he wanted to save Israel from a "new Holocaust."
But he has also questioned Israel's right to exist.
Ono said she hoped Vanunu could collect the award in person at a New York ceremony next month, to be held in the week her late husband, the murdered Beatle John Lennon, would have turned 64.
"Hopefully he can come and receive the award himself. He did complete his sentence, it's not as though he's a criminal," Ono said of Vanunu.
Even if he can't, the Tokyo-born artist stressed the symbolic importance of recognizing his plight.
"It's possible that he can't come - the point is that it's another statement, a statement that the whole world can share and think about," she said.
Ono also gave a $50,000 award to New Yorker magazine correspondent and author Seymour Hersh, whom she described as "a staunch seeker of truth" with his investigative journalism.
The biennial LennonOno prize was first given in 2002, when Israeli Zvi Goldstein and Palestinian Khalil Rabah each won for artistic contributions to peace in their homeland.
Ono, wearing a close-fitting black jacket, silky black trousers and her usual dark glasses, defended the power of peaceful symbols, acts and protest in the face of war.
"People power is stronger than the power of institutions," she said.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/478559.html
by : London Saturday 18th September 2004
----
Trauma notwithstanding, former hostage continues humanitarian battle
By CHIE MATSUMOTO, Contributing Writer
IHT/Asahi:
September 18, 2004
http://www.asahi.com/english/lifestyle/TKY200409180139.html
Nahoko Takato has an extraordinary ability to pick herself up again whatever blows life deals her-even if they include being held captive in Iraq.
The former hostage of the Mujahedeen Brigades in Fallujah has already resumed her volunteer work in the Middle East, this time as part of the effort to reconstruct a school in the town west of Baghdad where she was abducted for nine days in April along with freelance photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama and Noriaki Imai, who writes on depleted-uranium weapons issues.
While it's not quite a calling, Takato feels she left unfinished business in Iraq.
``I am determined to return,'' she says. ``It almost feels like I left a kettle on the stove.''
Though she hasn't yet set foot in Iraq again since her release, she returned to Amman, Jordan, for a month from the end of July to aid the Fallujah reconstruction effort. Between her April release and July, the 34-year-old aid worker helped establish the Iraq Hope Network, whose members include numerous Japanese volunteer groups and individuals, who share information and resources to enable more effective support.
With the help of local volunteers and nongovernmental organizations, the three former hostages and their families decided to contribute some of the 8 million yen in donations they received from benevolent Japanese to rebuild a school in Fallujah, she says. Creating jobs, especially for young men, and schools to keep children occupied will help keep them away from militia recruitment and the violent anti-American movement, she explains.
Takato is recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by her ordeal and still suffers from symptoms such as rashes, insomnia and palpitations. Her latest relapse occurred just before a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward last week. Though she seemed well and confidently explained the resumption of humanitarian aid work in Fallujah to a room full of journalists and television cameras, she says she still behaves like a recluse when in her hometown of Chitose, Hokkaido.
After her release, returning home, where she could hear the roar of fighter planes and the sound of cannon fire at the nearby Self-Defense Forces Chitose Air Base, was like reliving the war in Iraq, she says. Since her release, she has stayed at her parents' home no more than a week. She usually stays with friends.
Takato talks about her nightmarish ordeal, as well as disclosing details of the diary she has kept since visiting Iraq for the first time, in ``Senso to Heiwa: Soredemo Iraku-jin o Kiraini Narenai'' (War and peace: I can't hate Iraqi people, nonetheless; Kodansha).
Since the book was published early last month, Takato and her family have received letters from people apologizing for criticizing her and misunderstanding her good intentions, she says. The senders were, of course, referring to the ``personal responsibility'' that the Japanese government demanded from the hostages.
Although Takato says she has always been aware of the need to take responsibility upon entering war zones, she felt that she and the government didn't see eye to eye on exactly what ``personal responsibility'' meant. But she intends to repay the government for her ticket from Baghdad to Dubai as soon as her lawyers settle other issues with the Foreign Ministry.
People still wonder why Takato risked her life to help the street children of Iraq. Quite simply, she saw herself in those children, she said in an interview after the Tokyo news conference. The kids, some as young as elementary school age, smoking cigarettes and inhaling paint thinner from dawn until dusk, reminded her of her own youth.
As a child, Takato was a troublemaker who started smoking at 12, got hooked on paint thinner at 13 and soon afterward tried hashish.
It wasn't until she moved to metropolitan Tokyo to attend university that she began to get an idea of what she wanted to do with her life.
``I used to hate children,'' says Takato, who admits she often risked being stabbed with a butterfly knife when she managed a karaoke joint in Chitose that served as a hangout for juvenile delinquents.
But ever since she set off to India on her first humanitarian mission at age 30 to give herself a break from the day-to-day grind of working at the karaoke club, she has found children in need of compassion and affection everywhere she has visited, including Cambodia, Thailand and Iraq. When she returns to Japan to earn travel expenses, she works at a ramen joint and at a cattle ranch.
Working abroad hasn't stopped Takato contributing to her local community, where she has organized AIDS charity events, helped produce a recitation CD of her first book ``Aishiterutte Doiuno?'' (How do you say ``I love you''?; Bungeisha, 2002) and published a quarterly town information magazine.
But now that she's suffering from flashbacks caused by the constant noise at the nearby air base, Takato is beginning to see her beloved birthplace in a different light.
``I feel even more awful back in my hometown,'' she says. There, she can hear the SDF training people to kill while at the same time hearing blasts that are taking people's lives when she talks to Iraqi friends on the phone, she explains in tears.
``I wonder why fate put me in this painful position,'' she says.(IHT/Asahi: September 18, 2004) (09/18)
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