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NUCLEAR
Debaters: Nuclear Proliferation Single Most Serious Threat
Nuclear Fuel Still Missing From Calif.
Higher costs hit British Energy
Iran's Dire Threat - It might be able to defend itself
IAEA to inspect 'suspect' site in Iran
Iran leader reasserts arms views
Official questions IAEA's efficiency
Japan regrets French minister's comments on nuclear project
Brazil may have tapped into Pakistani nuclear smuggling network
Brazil Attacks Nuclear Reports
US deploys destroyers off North Korea as part of missile defense system
Dawn of a new era
Nuclear shipment close to coast
U.S. Fissile Material Ban Plan Fizzles
U.S. Senate Vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Pakistan refuses to let IAEA interview Dr Qadeer
Access to Pakistani nuke scientist not possible: official
Radiation Levels Prompt Search
Military Seeks Nuclear Bomb Lost in 1958
MILITARY
Karzai Accused of'Propaganda Campaign'
Nigerian troops raid Delta villages for illegal arms
West African armies and France sign up to joint exercises
Sudan Accepts International Force Mandate
China hits U.S. sales to Taiwan
Party Critics Urge Blair to Stand Up to Bush
Former Pentagon official gets nine months in prison in Boeing scandal
Iraq takes charge of defending its sea-borders
U.S.-Led Force Says It Took Half of Iraqi City Held by Insurgents
Dozens of Children Killed in Iraq Attack
19 Palestinians Killed in Gaza
Rebel Violence in Turkey Could Erode Kurds' Gains
Pakistani Mosque Ripped by Bomb During Packed Service
Russia's military on verge of collapse: defense minister
Goss Brings 4 Staffers From Hill to CIA
White House-CIA breach
Military Voter Education Underway
Its Recruitment Goals Pressing, the Army Will Ease Some Standards
U.S. Aide Faults Serbia for Not Handing Over War Crimes Suspect
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
High court halts record secrecy
9/11 Panelists Oppose House Provisions
9/11 Commissioners Say Bill's Added Provisions Are Harmful
U.S. to appeal ruling on secret subpoenas
British Guantanamo Detainee Alleges Abuse from Jail
Deportation Delayed for 'Enemy Combatant'
Tape Linked to bin Laden Deputy Urges Attacks on U.S.
White House backs torture-abroad law
POLITICS
Ethics Panel Rebukes DeLay
The Media's Culpability for Iraq
'Security Mom' Bloc Proves Hard to Find The Phenomenon May Be a Myth
Iraq Takes Center Stage in Debate
ENERGY
Ag Department Wind Energy Program Stalled
Conoco Wins $2 Bln Russian LUKOIL Stake
OTHER
With Russia's Nod, Treaty on Emissions Clears Last Hurdle
Mount St. Helens Releasing Steam, After Days of Quakes
Inspector General Says E.P.A. Rule Aids Polluters
Russian OK clears way for Kyoto
Lycopene, Vitamin E Reduce Prostate Tumors in Mice
Merck recalls Vioxx
Official: Iraq veterans face long-lasting mental health issues
ACTIVISTS
Activists Call for Probe Into Race Relations
Navy pulls plug on Project ELF
As I Lay Crying
-------- NUCLEAR
Debaters: Nuclear Proliferation Single Most Serious Threat
October 1, 2004
CORAL GABLES, Florida, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-01-02.asp
Last night, the divergent positions of President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry on nuclear proliferation and global warming were showcased during the first of three debates between the candidates for the country's top office. The debate topic was foreign affairs and homeland security.
The single most serious threat to the national security of the United States is "nuclear proliferation," said Kerry in response to a question by moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS TV.
"Nuclear proliferation," Kerry repeated. "There's some 600 plus tons of unsecured material still in the former Soviet Union and Russia. At the rate that the President is currently securing it, it'll take 13 years to get it."
Kerry said that his 1997 book "The New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America's Security," detailed back then "the difficulties of this international criminal network."
"We intercepted a suitcase in a Middle Eastern country with nuclear materials in it. And the black market sale price was about $250 million. Now, there are terrorists trying to get their hands on that stuff today," Kerry said.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts (left) and President George W. Bush shake hands before the debate at the University of Miami (Photo by Sharon Farmer courtesy Kerry campaign) He faulted President Bush for not doing more to secure nuclear material to keep it out of terrorist hands. Kerry said the Bush administration, "has secured less nuclear material in the last two years since 9/11 than we did in the two years preceding 9/11."
Kerry accused Bush of cutting the funding needed to secure nuclear materials and instead spending "hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons."
"The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense," said the Democratic challenger.
"You talk about mixed messages," Kerry said, referring to Bush's repeated criticism of his position on the Iraq war, "We're telling other people, 'You can't have nuclear weapons,' but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using."
"Not this President," said Kerry, envisioning himself in the White House. "I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation."
He promised to contain all of the nuclear material in Russia in four years and to "build the strongest international network to prevent nuclear proliferation."
"This is the scale of what President [John F.] Kennedy set out to do with the nuclear test ban treaty. It's our generation's equivalent. And I intend to get it done," Kerry said.
In rebuttal, President Bush said that his administration had actually "increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation about 35 percent since I've been the President."
President George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, in debate at the University of Miami (Photo courtesy Commission on Presidential Debates) "I agree with my opponent," the President said, "that the biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network. And that's why proliferation is one of the centerpieces of a multi-prong strategy to make the country safer."
Bush explained that his administration started the Proliferation Security Initiative. "Over 60 nations involved with disrupting the trans-shipment of information and/or weapons of mass destruction materials," said the President.
"And we've been effective. We busted the A.Q. Khan network. This was a proliferator out of Pakistan that was selling secrets to places like North Korea and Libya. We convinced Libya to disarm. It's a central part of dealing with weapons of mass destruction and proliferation," Bush said.
President Bush announced the Proliferation Security Initiative on May 31, 2003, during a visit to Poland.
The U.S. State Department explains that the Proliferation Security Initiative is "...a step in the implementation of the UN Security Council Presidential Statement of January 1992, which states that the proliferation of all WMD [weapons of mass destruction] constitutes a threat to international peace and security, and underlines the need for member states of the UN to prevent proliferation."
Moderator Lehrer asked the two candidates for confirmation that "the single most serious threat you believe, both of you believe, is nuclear proliferation?"
President Bush narrowly defined his concern about nuclear proliferation saying only, "In the hands of a terrorist enemy."
Senator Kerry more broadly defined his concern as, "Weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation."
Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, in debate at the University of Miami (Photo courtesy Commission on Presidential Debates) Kerry said, "The President has had four years to try to do something about it, and North Korea has got more weapons; Iran is moving toward weapons. And at his pace, it will take 13 years to secure those weapons in Russia. I'm going to do it in four years, and I'm going to immediately set out to have bilateral talks with North Korea."
But Bush countered with a warning that bi-lateral talks with North Korea would cause the six party talks with Russia, Japan, South Korea, China and the United States to dissolve.
"Again," the President said, "I can't tell you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It will cause the six-party talks to evaporate. It will mean that China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a big mistake to do that."
"We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves. And if you enter bilateral talks, they'll be happy to walk away from the table. I don't think that'll work," Bush said.
Kerry twice criticized the President for rejecting action to curb global warming. In one of several exchanges on Bush's failure to work in concert with the United Nations and U.S. allies, Kerry said, "We've watched this President actually turn away from some of the treaties that were on the table. You don't help yourself with other nations when you turn away from the global warming treaty, for instance, or when you refuse to deal at length with the United Nations."
Later, in a discussion about dealing with the realities of the international situation, Kerry said, "What I worry about with the President is that he's not acknowledging what's on the ground, he's not acknowledging the realities of North Korea, he's not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues."
The President did not respond to either of Kerry's global warming jabs.
The rest of the 90 minute debate focused on the advisability of the war in Iraq, and stratagies for bringing it to an end.
The second presidential debate will be on October 8, from Washington University in St. Louis. Charles Gibson of ABC News will moderate a town hall-type event. with questionis from the audience on a variety of topics.
On October 13, from Arizona State University in Tempe, Bob Schieffer of CBS News will moderate the third presential debate on domestic and economic policy.
On October 5, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the vice presidential candidates, Vice President Cheney and Senator Edwards, will debate with Gwen Ifill of PBS moderating.
-------- accidents and safety
Nuclear Fuel Still Missing From Calif.
(AP)
Friday October 1, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4529119,00.html
EUREKA, Calif. - Utility officials have yet to locate four pounds of missing radioactive nuclear fuel at a shuttered nuclear power plant, but federal regulators insisted the search must continue.
``You have to exhaust all avenues to find it, and we expect you to continue searching for it,'' Bruce Mallet of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Pacific, Gas & Electric Co. officials at a public meeting Wednesday.
Three pieces of a nuclear fuel rod were discovered missing during an inventory in June at the Humboldt Bay Power Plant, and may be among hundreds placed in a deep storage pool before the plant closed in 1976. So far, a search has yielded 40 fuel fragments that are being analyzed to see if they match the missing pieces.
Gregory Reuger, PG&E's chief nuclear officer at the plant, said documents give conflicting clues. One set of records state the pieces were shipped; another, that the shipment was canceled and the pieces placed back in the pool.
Regulators and utility officials said they believe there's no public danger, and that there's no chance the missing fuel may have gotten into the wrong hands.
``We are confident that if the segments are not found in the pool, then they were transferred to a facility licensed to accept radioactive material,'' said regulator Mark Satorius.
-------- britain
Higher costs hit British Energy
bbc
1 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3706122.stm
Troubled nuclear power company British Energy has reported a first-quarter loss but said it is making progress on its debt restructuring plans.
Higher operating costs and lower-than-expected output led to a £115m ($207m) loss for the three months to 30 June.
To avoid going into administration, British Energy is planning a debt-for-equity swap which will see its creditors take control of the firm.
British Energy nearly collapsed in 2002 after a slump in wholesale power prices
"Progress has been made towards the completion of the proposed restructuring, but it still remains subject to a number of significant uncertainties and important conditions," said British Energy in a statement.
On Thursday, a key shareholder in British Energy, investment company Polygon, dropped its opposition to the £5bn restructuring plan.
Polygon was unhappy at the terms of the deal, which will leave existing shareholders with just 2.5% of the company.
But Polygon decided there was no "commercial logic" in pursuing its complaint.
As part of the restructuring move, British Energy's shares will be delisted from the London stock market later this month.
-------- iran
Iran's Dire Threat - It might be able to defend itself
By Edward S. Herman
Z Magazine
October 2004
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/hermanpr1004.html
Iran is the next U.S. and Israeli target, so the mainstream U.S. media are once again serving the state agenda by focusing on Iran's alleged menace and refusing to provide context that would show the menace to be pure Orwell-that is, while Iran is seriously threatened by the U.S. and its aggressively ethnic-cleansing client, Iran only threatens the possibility of self-defense.
You might have thought that after the retrospectively awkward and embarrassing media service to Bush's lies about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and dire threat to U.S. national security, which greased the skids to the invasion/occupation of Iraq, that the media would be less prone to jump uncritically on war propaganda bandwagons. But you would be wrong. It is a pretty reliable law of media performance that whenever the state targets an enemy, the media will get on the bandwagon enthusiastically or, at minimum, allow themselves to be mobilized as agents of propaganda and disinformation. Given the power of the United States and the extreme weakness of its usual targets, the claims of the fearsome threat posed by the targets is always comical. My favorite remains Guatemala in the early 1950s, when the National Security Council claimed that this poor, tiny, and effectively disarmed country was "increasingly [an] instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere" and was posing a security threat to the United States as well as its neighbors. As in the case of Iraq in 2002-2003, most of the neighbors failed to recognize the dire threat and had to be bribed and coerced into supporting the U.S. position and the UN had to be (and was) neutralized.
In fact, the Communists hadn't taken over Guatemala and, with U.S. direct and indirect assistance, it was invaded and occupied by a U.S.-organized band of expatriates and mercenaries a month after the dire claims by the NSC. The New York Times and mass media in general cooperated fully in the propaganda campaign that made this proxy aggression palatable to the public. This early "liberation" transformed a democracy into an authoritarian counterinsurgency and terror state. The Times has never apologized for this performance and it has carefully avoided analyzing the results of that earlier intervention and contrasting it with the government's (and its own) pre-invasion propaganda claims.
Several decades later, in the 1980s, Nicaragua provided a partial rerun of the Guatemala experience, with an alleged dire security threat based on a link of the leftist Sandinistas to Moscow, a link mainly forced by an arms boycott and open U.S. campaign of destabilization, subversion, and sponsored terrorism. There was once again an army of expatriates organized and funded by the U.S.-the contras-that engaged in systematic terrorism. Once again the neighbors of Nicaragua couldn't see the dire threat and spent a great deal of effort in trying to fend off the United States by mediation and proposed compromises, which the Reagan administration resented and shunted aside. Once again, an appeal to the UN for protection against intervention by violence was futile and an International Court finding against the United States was ignored. In this case, the United States was able to oust the Sandinistas by the combination of terrorism and boycott, which halved per capita incomes, and by the effective manipulation of an election, in which the United States intervened with advice, money, propaganda, and a blackmail threat-only if the Sandinistas were ousted would the boycott and sponsored terrorism be terminated. The combination worked and the Sandinistas were ousted.
The mainstream media carefully avoided the Guatemala context as they once again served as agents of state propaganda, demonizing the Sandinistas, failing to contest the stream of lies justifying the violent intervention, ignoring its gross illegality, declaring the 1984 Nicaraguan election a "sham" (New York Times), whereas the genuine sham elections held in El Salvador in 1982 and 1984 under conditions of severe state terror were declared promising steps toward democracy (see Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent; note also how the U.S. media is now finding the U.S.-appointed puppet government of Iraq a democratic breakthrough: "Early Steps, Maybe, Toward a Democracy in Iraq," NYT, July 27, 2004). When the terror war, blackmail, and other forms of electoral intervention successfully removed the Sandinistas, the media were ecstatic, the New York Times featuring David Shipler's ode to "Victory Through Fair Play."
So just as Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Iraq were dire threats, so is Iran today because the Bush government says so and is supported here by Ariel Sharon. The first rule in supportive propaganda is to intensify attention to the villain and the alleged threat that he poses. Thus, the claims that Iran is trying to become a nuclear power have become the continuous basis of news, with all the details and claims of its moves toward nuclear capability newsworthy, emanating as they are from a superpower that is a primary-definer-plus. When it barks, all the smaller doggies in the "international community," including Kofi Annan and relevant UN agency officials (in this case, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA]), join in with their complementary barks. Nevertheless, Dr. ElBaradei has been uncomfortable in his role of UN agency frontperson for the U.S. buildup toward an attack on Iran, his role being similar to that of Hans Blix in the preparation for the Iraq attack. In a recent interview with Al-Ahram News (July 27, 2004), he notes how confined he is by his limited powers, so that he cannot visit Israel's Dimon reactor, only Iran's facilities, although he believes the only real solution is denuclearization throughout the Middle East (www.iaea.org).
The analogy with the attention to Iraq's alleged possession and threat of weapons of mass destruction in 2001-2003 is close: the United States made those claims, pressed them on the UN and its allies, and in consequence this became first order news. Today, the United States makes charges against Iran, presses its allies and the IAEA, and this makes the issue newsworthy. As a crude index, during the last six months (February 27-August 27, 2004), the New York Times had 21 articles whose headlines indicated that their subject matter was Iran's threat to acquire nuclear capability, with dozens more mentioning the Iran-nuclear connection.
The second rule in supportive propaganda is to frame the issues in such a way that the premises of the propaganda source are taken as given, with any inconvenient considerations ignored and any sources that would contest the party line bypassed or marginalized. This technique is well illustrated in David Sanger's "Diplomacy Fails to Slow Advance of Nuclear Arms," the front-page feature article in the New York Times of August 8, 2004-a virtually perfect model of propaganda service.
The frame of Sanger's article is the threat of the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the efforts to contain that threat via diplomacy, the difficulties encountered in these efforts, U.S. and Israeli concerns over the matter, and the opinions of Western officials and experts over what should be done. All seven quoted sources in Sanger's piece are present or former U.S. officials, which allows the establishment frame to be presented without challenge.
A basic Sanger premise is that the United States and Israel are good and do not pose threats worthy of mention, so that any "advance" in nuclear arms, or the possession and threat of use of such weapons by these states, is outside the realm of discourse. Thus, the ongoing and well-funded U.S. program of developing "blockbuster" and other tactical nuclear weapons, the Bush plan to make nuclear weapons not merely a deterrent, but usable in normal warfare, and the U.S. intention to exploit space as a platform for nuclear as well as other technologically advanced weapons systems, do not fall under the heading "advance of nuclear arms" and they are not mentioned in the article. These are not the views of the global majority, but they represent the official U.S. view, hence serving as a premise of the Times reporter.
A second and related Sanger premise is that the United States has the right to decide who can and cannot have nuclear arms and to compel the disarmament of any country that acquires them. He quotes Bush's statement that he will not "tolerate" North Korea or Iran acquiring such arms, and Sanger treats the U.S. push to keep its targets disarmed as an undebatable position.
A third premise is that while Iran's possible violation of its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty is newsworthy and important, the failure of the United States to follow through on its promise in signing that treaty to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons through good faith negotiations, a commitment brazenly violated in the open Bush effort to improve and make usable nuclear weapons, is not newsworthy. Again, this is what a press arm of the government would take as a premise, and so does the New York Times (and virtually the entire corporate media).
A fourth premise of Sanger's piece is that Israel's refusal to have anything to do with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its possession and threat to use nuclear arms is not relevant as context in discussing the threat of Iran's nuclear capability. Israel is referred to by Sanger only as fearing the Iran threat and possibly planning on preemptive action to eliminate that threat. The Arab states and most of the world cannot see the justice of Israel being allowed to acquire nuclear arms, even with superior conventional forces and a U.S. protective umbrella, while Arab states cannot do so. Again, as Israel is a U.S. client state whose acquisition of nuclear arms was facilitated and is protected by the United States, this matter is outside the orbit of discourse for U.S. officials and hence of the New York Times (etc.).
A fifth premise, implicit in the foregoing, is that Iran does not have a right to self-defense. Israel claims that its nuclear weapons are for self-defense in a hostile environment, but Iran, threatened by both Israel and its superpower ally, does not have that right, although its self-defense needs are far more serious than either Israel's or the U.S.'s. This was a premise of officials, and hence of the New York Times, in dealing with Guatemala's attempt to buy arms back in 1953, Nicaragua's similar efforts in the 1980s, and Saddam's mythical threatening WMD in 2002-3.
Sanger's article is clean in the sense that there is no deviation from the party line on the source of any nuclear threat and the "advances" that are worrisome. The Times' subservience to the state in the propaganda buildup to the invasion-occupation of Iraq was not new and was not terminated by that sad experience. On the contrary, it proceeds apace, with any lessons or qualms overpowered by institutional forces that press it to support state crimes now just as it did in the case of the overthrow of democracy in Guatemala in 1954 and other alleged "liberations."
Edward S. Herman is a regular contributor to Z Magazine and author of numerous books.
----
IAEA to inspect 'suspect' site in Iran
Al-Baradai: no proof of nuclear weapons activity at the site
Reuters
Friday 01 October 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/138C6226-5521-496A-9179-58A076E00E1D.htm
Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog will soon visit the Parchin military complex in Iran, where the United States alleges Tehran has been conducting secret atomic weapons work, Western diplomats said on Friday.
IAEA chief Muhammad al-Baradai previously indicated there were no signs that Parchin was a nuclear weapons site, but US officials said al-Baradai was not qualified to make such a statement without having inspected the site.
Last month, a prominent nuclear expert said analysis of recent satellite images showed that Parchin, 30km southeast of Tehran, could be a site for research, testing and production of nuclear weapons and should be closely inspected.
Iran dismissed the charge, insisting there were no nuclear activities at Parchin. It also denied ignoring UN requests to visit the site, saying inspectors had never asked to go there.
"They asked to go there and Iranians have told the IAEA that they can go to Parchin," a Western diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters.
Inspections this month
It was unclear if the agency would be permitted to take environmental samples to test for traces of nuclear materials, but IAEA inspectors routinely take samples at all important sites to verify that no undeclared atomic work has been carried out.
A nuclear expert told Reuters - on condition of anonymity - inspectors were planning to go to Parchin this month, in time to include their observations of the site in next month's crucial progress report.
An IAEA spokeswoman declined to comment, saying that inspection locations and times were strictly confidential.
When the IAEA board of governors meets in November, it is expected to decide whether Iranian activities warrant a report to the UN Security Council.
Theoretically, the Security Council could then impose economic sanctions to pressure Iran.
An IAEA resolution passed last month demanded that Iran should answer all outstanding questions and provide prompt access to all sites agency inspectors wanted to visit.
While Iran is providing access, it has balked at the IAEA's demand that it should freeze all activities on uranium enrichment.
Defiance in Tehran
On Friday, a leading Iranian cleric said his country would never be bullied into giving up its nuclear programme, but denied having ambitions for weapons-grade development.
"Iran will never yield to international pressure to abandon its home-grown nuclear technology," Ayat Allah Ahmad Jannati, who heads Iran's hard-line Guardian Council - a powerful, unelected supervisory body - told worshippers at prayers in Tehran.
"Americans should know that it is just impossible. You will take this wish to the grave," he added. "We have no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons."
Washington says Tehran is developing weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme and wants it reported to the Security Council. Tehran vehemently denies the accusation.
Iranian officials were not available for comment, but a diplomat close to the negotiations said Iran had agreed in principle to allow IAEA inspectors to visit all sites.
----
Iran leader reasserts arms views
The New York Times
Susan Chira
October 01, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/541398.html
NEW YORK Iran's foreign minister has said that his country will never give up its right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful use, though he denied any intent to produce nuclear weapons.
The minister, Kamal Kharrazi, told journalists Wednesday that relations with the United States were at a low point, and charged that influential neoconservatives were urging the United States to attack Iran, seeking "regime change." But he said that Iran was ready to negotiate with European ministers to find a way to calm fears that it was developing nuclear weapons.
"Nobody has the right to deny Iran its right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," he said. "We are ready to negotiate with them on any instrument or mechanism that would remove the concern of others."
Previous meetings with European ministers have ended with no resolution; Kharrazi said no new meetings had been scheduled.
Last week, Iran defied the International Atomic Energy Agency by saying it was resuming the process that enriches uranium, but it said it was to produce power, not bombs, as the United States has charged. The United States has been pushing to bring the matter before the UN Security Council.
Asked whether Iran had converted all the uranium it possessed, Kharrazi said, "I don't know, but the IAEA cameras are there."
During the Wednesday meeting with American journalists at the residence of the Iranian ambassador to the UN, Kharrazi also said that Iran was eager to see Iraq hold elections in January, even if not every city could participate - a position shared by Iraq's influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has longstanding ties with Iran. He also said he was confident that the Iraqi elections, as well as elections scheduled Oct. 9 in Afghanistan, would be good for the entire region.
He said he was not worried that Iran's interests would be threatened by elections in the two nations, which border Iran. "Democracy does not necessarily bring pro-U.S. governments," he said.
Some Pentagon officials have charged that Iran is sending money and weapons into Iraq, both to bolster Shiite insurgents such as Moktada al-Sadr and to increase its influence over Shiite political parties to help sway the election.
"The Pentagon is quite wrong that Iran is doing this," Kharrazi said. Instead of backing al-Sadr, he said, Iran had in fact helped to moderate him.
The United States made a mistake in opposing al-Sadr, Kharrazi said, because it merely swelled his popularity. And he said Iran did not need to send money, since it already wields influence in Iraq.
He predicted that the insurgency would continue, swelled by resentment of ordinary Iraqis. "Iraqis who have been humiliated somehow by the United States - and their families have been killed or tortured - are very ready to kill Americans," he said.
He said the only solution would be a multinational force under the command of the United Nations, an idea the United States has opposed.
He cited recent opinion polls showing that even in nations whose governments have been friendly to the United States, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the vast majority of people are hostile to the American government. Such hostility fuels extremism, he said.
Only if the United States changes policies that support Israel can it hope to win over ordinary people in the Middle East, he said.
-------- inspections
Official questions IAEA's efficiency
October 01, 2004
By Marion Baillot
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040930-100332-3797r.htm
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is inefficient against nuclear proliferation and oversteps its mandate in its efforts to curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a senior Bush administration official said this week.
"There is, I think it's fair to say, an enormous frustration on many occasions within the American body politic about the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of U.N. agencies," said John R. Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, during a conference at the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday. "At the same time, there is concern that these agencies not exceed their mandates, that they have responsibilities and duties that their underlying charters or statutes or enabling treaties give them. And we want them to be confined to that."
Charging that the IAEA has been unable to rein in either the Iranian or North Korean nuclear programs, Mr. Bolton said the agency is spending the bulk of its expertise and resources on peaceful nations, when rogue nuclear programs and terrorism are the real concerns.
"Sixty percent of the IAEA safeguards budget is spent monitoring compliance with the safeguards agreement of Canada, Japan, and Germany," he said.
He said it was incomprehensible that the IAEA had not taken more action on Iran.
"Despite the fact that we have now had the Iranian nuclear program, under consideration in the board of governors for six meetings, extending over a period of 18 months, the board has not yet come to the conclusion that Iran should be referred to the [U.N.] Security Council," he said.
Mr. Bolton said that according to IAEA statutes, it had a mandatory responsibility to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for violating nuclear safeguards.
"There's no doubt that there are legitimate questions about what Iran is up to," he said.
He said some diplomats fear that simply referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council is tantamount to punishment. He flatly denied that.
"We're talking about discussions in the Security Council chamber. Not the Star Chamber," he said. "We don't have whips and chains around the side of it. We don't have permanent representatives stretched out on racks. We don't have thumbscrews for foreign ministers. We're talking about the Security Council."
Mr. Bolton said that even if Iran were referred, there is a question among U.S. policy-makers regarding the U.N.'s ability to act.
"Are we looking at another situation analogous to the Cold War, where the Security Council is gridlocked?" he asked.
For that reason, he said the United States is participating in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), "which is, like the IAEA and the Security Council, a multilateral effort."
He called the October 2003 interdiction of the ship, the BBC China, which was bearing a cargo of uranium centrifuge equipment, ultimately destined for Libya, a PSI success he could discuss in public.
He explained, "There are alternatives that are out there that are fully multilateral; that involve close cooperation among many nations, not undertaken unilaterally by the United States, that could have and should have and will have a dramatic effect on proliferation.
"Note that our policy with respect to Iran and North Korea is resolutely multilateral, all across the board," he said.
-------- japan
Japan regrets French minister's comments on nuclear project
(AFP)
October 1, 2004
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041001/323/f3pph.html
TOKYO - A Japanese official said he regretted a French minister's suggestion that France is going to host a revolutionary nuclear energy project while the site is still in dispute. The European Union and Japan are vying to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a test-bed for what is being billed as a clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future. The United States and South Korea support the Japanese candidate site to host ITER, but the European Union, Russia and China back the French site in the southern town of Cadarache.
"We have conducted six-party talks up to now. In the midst of those talks, it is very unfortunate that France is saying the project will go ahead without a decision having been reached," Takahiro Hayashi, deputy director of Japan's Office of Fusion Energy, told AFP.
Hayashi was responding to French research minister Francois d'Aubert's comments Thursday that Europe could go ahead with the ITER project in Cadarache even if the United States, Japan and South Korea disagreed.
The Nihon Keizai economic daily quoted the minister as saying construction would begin in Cadarache even if the site lacked US, South Korean and Japanese support.
"Given the situation today, it's Cadarache," D'Aubert told reporters on a tour of the site Thursday.
"Frankly... we are on the right path," he said. "I'm not saying we are on the home stretch, but it's not far at all."
The European Union reaffirmed its desire last month to get broad international backing for the project, but sources said the EU was growing anxious about delays on picking a site and might in the last resort go ahead at its own location.
Wrangling over the decision is expected to focus on a meeting of the six partners in Vienna in mid-October, hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A next meeting of the ITER six-party group has not been set although negotiations are under way to hold it at the end of the month, Hayashi said.
D'Aubert has argued the 10 billion dollar project could be launched with EU, French, Russian and Chinese funding.
India, Brazil and Switzerland are also interested in participating and could be asked to shoulder some of the remaining costs, he has said.
D'Aubert is expected to visit Tokyo by the end of the year for regular scientific exchanges between France and Japan.
The project, emulating the sun's nuclear fusion, is not expected to generate electricity before 2050.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil may have tapped into Pakistani nuclear smuggling network - US expert
VIENNA (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001165941.nugkiaed.html
Brazil may have acquired key nuclear technology it is trying to keep UN atomic inspectors from seeing from a nuclear smuggling network that also supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea, a US non-proliferation expert said Friday.
"Look at the performance (data) of these centrifuges (in Brazil). They look very similar to the P2," sold by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's network, Henry Sokolski, a former Pentagon official who now runs the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center think tank in Washington, told AFP by telephone.
But International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said "there is no indication so far that any other country shopped from the Khan network" beyond Iran, Libya and North Korea.
The Vienna-based IAEA is investigating Iran on US charges that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
It is also trying to trace the operations of the Khan network, which has been exposed after Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was arrested earlier this year.
Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium, a process that makes what can be fuel for civilian reactors but also the explosive core of atomic bombs.
Brazil has since February blocked IAEA inspectors from coming to inspect its uranium enrichment facilities.
Sokolski said the Brazilians "do not want anyone to see the shapes of the casings and rotors" of their centrifuges.
IAEA inspectors are due to arrive in Brazil on October 15 to try to resolve the dispute.
The Brazilian science and technology ministry has stressed that IAEA inspectors "will only have access to parts indispensable to the application of guarantees, without revealing the cores of the centrifuges."
"After a five-month suspension, negotiations on the inspection of the plant have resumed," Science and Technology spokeswoman Vera Canfran told AFP.
Brazil, which has one of the world's largest uranium reserves, denied IAEA inspectors access in February and March to a uranium-enriching facility in Resende, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, saying it wanted to protect industry trade secrets.
IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei has said Brazil, which is widely believed to have a peaceful nuclear program, should not be an exception to IAEA norms.
IAEA spokeswoman Fleming said talk about Brazil as a possible Khan client "does not seem to fit what the IAEA knows about Brazil's nuclear program nor does it correspond to our talks with them so far."
Sokolski said "people say Brazil worked on its latest technology in the late 1990's," a reference to the period when the Khan network was especially active.
He said Brazil might have turned to the Khan network in order to make financial and technological shortcuts in developing centrifuges.
But experts close to the IAEA told AFP they did not think Brazil had tapped into the Khan network.
"They may have gotten some help from abroad with sensitive technology but Brazil has apparently developed centrifuges with some unique features," one expert, who asked not to be named, said, reinforcing the theory that Brazil is trying to hide its enrichment facilities in order to avoid industrial espionage.
----
Brazil Attacks Nuclear Reports
Associated Press
October 1, 2004
By VIVIAN SEQUERA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4527506,00.html
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazil on Thursday rejected reports that it isn't giving United Nations inspectors full access to its uranium enrichment facilities because it wants to hide technology purchased on the nuclear black market.
Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told The Associated Press that Brazil only wants to preserve the know-how of technology it has developed over the years and pointed to the country's constitution, which says nuclear energy can be used for peaceful purposes only.
``Brazil is a country with uranium-enrichment technology of its own. It does not belong to the category of nations which are learning technologies,'' he said. ``I don't think there is any concern about Brazil.''
On Thursday, the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper cited a former U.S. Defense Department official as saying the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Brazil purchased its uranium centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who diverted nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
The science and technology ministry denied the claim but did not directly respond to the charges. It said critics must prove their accusations.
Estado cited Henry D. Sokolski, a former Pentagon official who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a think-tank based in Washington D.C. He claims he learned of IAEA's fears through contacts at the U.N. agency whom he did not identify.
Brazil claims that the centrifuges at its plant in Resende, about 60 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, use advanced technology that could be stolen by other countries if the inspectors are allowed to view it.
But analysts doubt Brazil has developed technology that is radically different from what is used at other uranium enrichment plants and point out that technological advances are traditionally protected with patents.
Last week, the government said it was near an agreement that would allow the IAEA to inspect its uranium enrichment facilities without granting inspectors full access.
The deal reportedly would ``preserve the country's technological and commercial secrets,'' the science and technology ministry said in a statement.
According to the ministry, IAEA inspectors who plan to visit the plant on Oct. 18 will have access only to features essential to safeguards but not to the ``body'' of the centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
Brazil expects its uranium enrichment plant to be ready in October. The government wants to use the enriched uranium to fuel its Angra I and II nuclear power plants, which produce 4.3 percent of the nation's electricity.
Brazil has the world's sixth-largest uranium reserves but currently must ship the ore out of the country to be processed for use in its nuclear power plants.
-------- missile defense
US deploys destroyers off North Korea as part of missile defense system
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001182930.fpbm3oys.html
US destroyers equipped with Aegis missile tracking systems have been deployed in the Sea of Japan near North Korea as part of a controversial new US missile defense system, the Navy's civilian chief said Friday.
"We do have our Aegis destroyers deployed and indeed they do have tracking capability as we committed to do before the end of the year," Navy Secretary Gordon England told reporters.
England confirmed reports that the destroyers were in the Sea of Japan near North Korea, whose long-range missile and nuclear weapons programs put it at the top of the US threat list.
But he would not say whether it meant the missile defense system that the United States is erecting at bases in Alaska and California is now operational.
Pentagon officials have said the United States is on track to declare the system's "initial defensive capability" this year, providing a limited defense against long range missile attack by a "rogue" state.
Critics of the system, however, say there is little confidence the system will work because it has not been sufficiently tested.
The Aegis destroyers' powerful radars would be used to track long-range missiles after they have been detected by early warning radars.
Data from the radars flow to command centers where they are integrated with other targeting data to launch interceptor missiles into the path of the incoming missile.
So far, the Pentagon has deployed five interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska. One more is to be added at Fort Greely in mid-October and two others at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California before the end of the year.
Early warning radars and Aegis radars on navy destroyers have been upgraded for the missile defense system. The command and control system linking the radars to the interceptor missile also have now been installed, said Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.
He said the US Northern Command, Strategic Command and the Pacific Command will conduct a series of warfighting exercises before a decision is made to declare the system to be operatinal.
The system will be tested electronically to ensure its components are performing correctly, but there will be no actual test launch of an interceptor missile from Fort Greely at a target missile before it is declared to have an "initial defensive capability," he said.
The last time the system was flight tested was in December 2002. However, a surrogate booster and radar were used in those and earlier tests. Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's chief of operational testing and evaluation of weapon systems, has warned they system may be only 20 percent effective.
Retired general Eugene Habiger, former head of the US Strategic Command, recently decried the rush to field a system, saying it "does not have any credible capability."
"I cannot recall any military system being deployed in such a manner," he said. "In my entire military experience, I have never seen a weapons system deployed with something as squishy, if you will, as an "initial defensive capability."
Habiger also suggested the North Korean threat has been exagerated, saying it has not flight tested an intercontinental ballistic missile and must first overcome the formidable challenge of miniaturizing a nuclear warhead.
"The defense is going to be a system that has never been flight-tested, against a threat that has never been flight-tested," he said.
-----
Dawn of a new era
October 01, 2004
Washington Times
By James T. Hackett
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040930-082912-9559r.htm
After three decades of total vulnerability to missile attack, today marks the dawn of a new era of deployed defenses. The first five interceptors are in their silos and soon will be on alert. If President Bush continues in office, those defenses will strengthen and grow. If not, they likely will be shut down, like the earlier Safeguard missile defense in 1976.
That earlier missile defense became operational at Grand Forks, N.D., 29 years ago today, on Oct. 1, 1975. Like the missile defense of Moscow, it was equipped with nuclear-armed interceptors. Unlike Moscow's defense, it did not protect either the capital or the American people. Instead, under the bizarre concept of Mutual Assured Destruction, it defended only a remote missile base to assure a counterattack, disregarding the millions who would die in the initial assault.
But as America's only missile defense site was opening, the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted to close it. In the Senate, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, offered an amendment supporting the House action. As a result, the Grand Forks site was deactivated in February 1976. The arms controllers hoped the Soviet Union would follow suit, but Moscow has maintained, modernized and today still operates its missile defense, with more upgrades now under way.
What a difference a treaty makes. The opening and rapid closing of the Grand Forks missile defense came just a few years after the signing of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It was in the optimistic glow of arms control that the country's earlier defense was killed. But time showed the arms control solution to be a one-way street. While the U.S. remained defenseless, the Soviets not only kept their defenses, but greatly increased the number of warheads and throw-weight of their offensive missiles.
That led President Reagan in 1983 to announce the Strategic Defense Initiative, enabling the Pentagon and industry to do the research needed to defend against high-speed ballistic missiles. That research demonstrated advances in computers and other technologies made it possible to hit a missile with a missile, avoiding the use of nuclear weapons.
But despite years of successful research and development, the ABM treaty prevented deployment of a national missile defense. Research could continue, but no defense could be fielded. That was the policy of President Clinton, who fought to preserve the ABM treaty while refusing to field defenses.
Mr. Bush changed all that in December 2001 when he withdrew from the treaty. A year later, he issued a presidential directive to actually deploy missile defenses for the U.S. homeland, and for U.S. forces and allies around the world, beginning in 2004. That order was all the armed forces needed. In less than two years, and while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, they made a Herculean effort to put defenses in place.
This month, defenses become a reality. An Aegis destroyer with upgraded radar will watch for missile launches in the Sea of Japan. Interceptors in Alaska are going on alert, defending the whole country against missiles for the first time. By year's end, the initial defense will include six 54-foot interceptors in Alaska and two in California, six upgraded Aegis destroyers in the Pacific, and interlinked sensors ranging from satellites to ground-based radars. Yet, this is just the beginning.
Next year, 10 more interceptors will be in place in Alaska, and the infrastructure will be ready for 40. Seven more Aegis cruisers and destroyers will be upgraded, with a total of 18 to be earmarked for missile defense. The giant seagoing X-band radar will operate off the Aleutian Islands, and radars in California, England and Greenland will be modernized. By late next year, the new THAAD high-altitude interceptor could be on alert and sea-based interceptors could be operational.
These plans are all in place and the Missile Defense Agency is working hard to meet the deadlines. But whether an effective defense will be sustained and improved to stay ahead of the spread of missiles and nuclear weapons depends on the outcome of the November election.
Mr. Clinton chose not to deploy missile defenses. Mr. Bush chose to do so, ended the treaty that blocked deployment, and set plans to expand and improve those defenses in the years ahead. His next move is well known.
What Sen. John Kerry will do is not known. He has said he opposes deployment, but he also said he would build defenses while cutting funding for them. His Senate record speaks volumes. He and his colleague Ted Kennedy have the most liberal Senate voting records. Over the years, they consistently have opposed defense spending and missile defense.
Mr. Kennedy was instrumental in killing the Safeguard missile defense 29 years ago. If Mr. Kerry and Mr. Kennedy take control of national defense, you can bet they will do it again.
James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to The Washington Times based in San Diego.
-------- terrorism / transportation
Nuclear shipment close to coast
bbc.co.uk
1 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/3700384.stm
A shipment of weapons-grade plutonium being transported to France from the USA will be passing within 26km (16 miles) of Cornwall on Friday.
Earlier this week people living in South West England and the Channel Islands were told that precautions to protect the material were in place.
The controversial shipment will also be passing within 50km (31 miles) of the Channel Islands en route to Cherbourg.
Shipment authorities say the vessels are armed and safe to carry the waste.
The shipment is of 140kg of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to make 40 nuclear bombs.
It is being transported on behalf of the US Department of Energy by two UK-registered vessels from shipping company Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited (PNTL), whose main shareholder is British Nuclear Fuel Limited (BNFL).
The Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail left the US a week ago on their trans-Atlantic crossing. They should enter the English Channel by the weekend.
The highly radioactive material has been taken directly from nuclear warheads, following disarmament agreements with Russia.
Once in France, the plutonium will be transported to the south of the country to be processed and converted into mixed oxide (Mox) nuclear fuel.
Campaign group Greenpeace claims the vessels pose a potential "environmental and terrorist threat" and former UK Atomic Weapons Establishment scientist Dr Frank Barnaby said an on-board accident could have serious consequences.
Dr Barnaby also criticised the level of security being provided for the shipment by the company responsible for the transportation, Cogema-Areva Logistics.
He said a warship should have been used to transport the nuclear material because of the risk of a terror attack.
His view is shared by Torbay's MP, Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders.
Safety reassurances
Mr Sanders said: "My concern is that this particular substance should be dealt with in the USA and turned into the fuel there.
"It shouldn't be transported half-way across the world at any time, let alone in this heightened period of terrorist activity."
Shaun Burnie, from Greenpeace, said the shipment "did not need to happen".
He added: "This is bomb material that cannot be, and should not be, treated as if you're just handling bananas or something."
West Cornwall MP Andrew George has written to the Home Secretary David Blunkett, asking for reassurance over safety.
Cogema-Areva Logistics said fears were unjustified. It said the vessels had a squad of armed officers from the UK Atomic Energy Agency Constabulary and were also carrying naval cannons, had satellite monitoring and heavily reinforced hulls, plus back-up engines.
A BNFL spokesman said PNTL had carried over 170 shipments for a total of about five million miles without any incidents.
He added: "PNTL have got a huge experience of carrying all sorts of nuclear materials over the last 30 years.
"These things don't just happen on a whim. They are carried out under very strict regulatory authorisations."
-------- treaties
U.S. Fissile Material Ban Plan Fizzles
Wade Boese,
Arms Control Today,
October, 2004
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_10/Fissile_Material.asp
A U.S. government effort to begin negotiations this summer on a treaty banning production of two key ingredients for nuclear weapons fizzled when Washington failed to fully explain its new position toward the agreement.
After a prolonged review, the United States declared at the end of July that it would seek negotiations at the 65-member Conference on Disarmament (CD) on a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT), which would forbid the production of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium for weapon purposes. A nuclear weapon cannot be made without one of these two fissile materials. As part of the announcement, the Bush administration overturned past U.S. policy by declaring it did not believe a final agreement could adequately detect cheating. (See ACT, September 2004.)
An American team of experts traveled to Geneva Sept. 1-2 to explain the revised U.S. assessment to its fellow CD members. The talks yielded no breakthrough.
U.S. officials spoke positively about the briefings afterward, but foreign diplomats said the team made little headway in persuading others that an FMCT is not verifiable. They said the U.S. delegation skirted a crucial point: whether the United States supports negotiations on the basis of a previously agreed March 1995 FMCT mandate calling for an "effectively verifiable" treaty or whether it wants a new mandate. CD decisions require consensus, and negotiations cannot start if a single member opposes them.
Washington has kept silent on the 1995 mandate, known as the Shannon mandate after the Canadian ambassador who helped craft it, and U.S. officials refused to discuss the matter in Geneva. U.S. officials said that their September briefings were only intended to provide a technical explanation of why the treaty could not be "effectively verifiable."
It is unclear why the United States has not taken a stand on the 1995 mandate. Some speculate that the U.S. government has not arrived at a final position. Others believe that the United States wants to avoid breaking with many of its allies during an election year. Australia, Canada, and Japan firmly back the Shannon mandate.
In August and September interviews with Arms Control Today, administration officials suggested the existing mandate would be a nonstarter because they did not believe an "effectively verifiable" treaty was attainable. But many delegations assert that trying to replace or modify the 1995 mandate would only further gridlock the conference, which has not negotiated a treaty since the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. U.S. officials charged that negotiating a verification regime would simply instill a "false sense of security" and needlessly delay an agreement.
Canadian Ambassador Paul Meyer said in a Sept. 15 ACT interview that starting FMCT negotiations is "crucial" and their beginning "should not be complicated by any effort to reopen the existing mandate." Meyer added that the mandate does not prescribe a result and allows all countries to raise their concerns during negotiations.
In their briefings, U.S. officials outlined what they perceive as treaty weaknesses that cheaters could use to their advantage. A Department of State official told reporters in Washington Sept. 1 that the administration believes the treaty could not be constructed in a way to detect noncompliance in a "timely fashion."
In particular, U.S. officials argued that it would be difficult to assess whether a specific quantity of fissile material was produced before or after the treaty took effect. They also argued that HEU and plutonium could be produced for weapons under the cover of permitted activities, such as making fuel for naval propulsion reactors. Given these potential loopholes, U.S. officials charged that negotiating a verification regime would simply instill a "false sense of security" and needlessly delay an agreement.
Other countries hold that a verifiable treaty is feasible and essentially requires extending safeguards, such as inspections and monitoring measures, that are currently applied to the nuclear facilities of countries declared as non-nuclear-weapon states under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to the nuclear-armed states-both those acknowledged as such under the NPT and those widely viewed as de facto nuclear powers. Four of the NPT's declared nuclear-weapon states-France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States-have publicly halted fissile material production for weapons. The fifth, China, has reportedly done the same. Of the three non-NPT states armed with nuclear weapons, Israel's production status is unclear, while India and Pakistan are suspected of currently making more material for bombs.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei weighed in on the debate Sept. 20, recommending that the conference redouble its efforts to negotiate a "non-discriminatory and internationally verifiable" FMCT. The IAEA, which verifies that non-nuclear-weapon states are not covertly pursuing nuclear weapons, reported in a 1995 paper that "[i]t is the IAEA Secretariat's assessment that verification of a treaty banning the production of fissile materials would be possible through a verification system quite similar to the one applied for the IAEA safeguards system."
The start of FMCT negotiations do not hinge solely on the United States finding common ground with other members on an FMCT, but on other issues too. Most other countries favor holding less formal talks on nuclear disarmament and the prevention of an arms race in outer space in parallel with FMCT negotiations. Yet, U.S. Ambassador Jackie W. Sanders told the conference July 29 that FMCT negotiations "must have a clean mandate that is not linked to other unrelated proposals."
One European CD ambassador said in a Sept. 14 ACT interview that beginning any work in the conference without talks on nuclear disarmament and outer space would "never be acceptable" to China, Russia, and tens of others. With so much ambiguity surrounding key U.S. positions, the CD closed its doors for the year as previously scheduled on Sept. 10 without launching any negotiations. It will reconvene Jan. 24, 2005.
-----
Looking Back The U.S. Senate Vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Damien J. LaVera
Arms Control Today
October 2004
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_10/LookingBack_CTBT.asp
This month marks the fifth anniversary of one of the most self-defeating moments in the U.S. Senate's history of involvement in international arms control. On Oct. 13, 1999, that body voted 51-48 against ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), slowing efforts to bring the treaty into force; stalling progress on the broader arms control agenda; and foreshadowing the Bush administration's new, aggressively unilaterlist approach to national security.
Still, even without U.S. ratification, the continued and increasing global support for the CTBT has helped sustain a 13-year-old U.S. test moratorium, brought about a de facto global moratorium, and helped pave the way for the treaty's eventual entry into force when conditions permit.
Prior to the vote, CTBT opponents argued that the treaty would not be verifiable, that the long-term safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile could not be ensured without nuclear testing, and that the treaty would be of limited nonproliferation value.[1] Perhaps the most important question was whether the CTBT's verification and monitoring regime would be capable of deterring and detecting clandestine tests. Opponents argued that this would not be possible because a zero-yield test ban is inherently unverifiable. As Sandia National Laboratory Director Paul Robinson said, "[I]t is very unlikely that the threshold for detection and yield measurement in most parts of the world will ever reach the level to identify these yields as nuclear tests, and hence as violations to the U.S. understanding of the treaty's central obligation."[2]
Five years later, however, the evidence suggests that the treaty's verification and compliance regime is up to the task. Take, for instance, the August 2000 explosions that sunk the Russian submarine, the Kursk, in the Baltic Sea. Seismic monitoring stations clearly identified two explosions: one small precursor explosion, followed by a much larger blast 135 seconds later. The second explosion, estimated to be 250 times more powerful than the first, was determined to be equivalent to five tons of TNT.[3] By comparison, the smallest yield for a U.S. nuclear test was the July 1962 test of a shoulder-fired tactical nuclear weapon with a yield of 18 tons,[4] while the smallest of India's 1998 nuclear tests was claimed to have a yield of 0.2 kilotons, 40 times stronger than the Kursk explosion.[5]
The treaty's monitoring system has also been helpful in evaluating two high-profile explosions in North Korea: the April 2004 railcar explosion and last month's explosion in the North Korean mountains. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) reportedly used data collected by the International Monitoring System (IMS) to correct inaccuracies in North Korean statements about the railcar explosion,[6] while reports indicate that IMS monitoring data helped determine that last month's explosion was not a nuclear test.[7]
These examples demonstrate that IMS detection and monitoring capabilities are highly accurate, are already proving their value to the international community, and will only grow more effective and important as the system is completed. They also confirm the conclusions of a July 2002 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review of the technical issues involved with the CTBT, which determined that "underground explosions can be reliably detected and can be identified as explosions, using IMS data, down to a yield of 0.1 [kiloton] (100 tons) in hard rock if conducted anywhere in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America. In some locations of interest...this capability extends down to 0.01 [kiloton] (10 tons) or less."[8] Add to this impressive capability the data collected not just by the IMS but also through national technical means and other systems deployed for reasons other than treaty compliance, along with the treaty's onsite inspection provisions, and would-be cheaters face a virtually impenetrable gauntlet of verification measures.
Although CTBT supporters recognized the effectiveness of this system during the 1999 debate, no one could have predicted the seismic shift in the U.S. policy toward arms control verification following the vote. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) correctly said that effective verification and enforcement provisions are "minimally necessary for sensible treaties."[9] In the last four years, however, the Senate has ratified the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which contained no special verification measures, and the administration has decided against pursuing verification and enforcement provisions in proposed fissile material cutoff treaty negotiations. What impact, if any, this will have on the CTBT is still not clear.
Stockpile Stewardship
During the 1999 debate, CTBT opponents also argued that a permanent test ban would undermine the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Critics claimed that "testing has been the essential element that has maintained the viability of our stockpile" and that the inability to conduct nuclear tests would lead to intolerable levels of uncertainty in determining the safety and reliability of remanufactured weapons.[10] Kyl said in 2000 that Los Alamos scientists working to re-establish our ability to make plutonium pits were "struggling with this very problem."[11]
Here again, the record suggests that these concerns were unfounded. As General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in his January 2001 report, "The nation's arsenal is safe, reliable, and able to meet all stated military requirements...as far into the future as we can see."[12] The NAS report confirmed that conclusion, noting that historically the United States has conducted very few nuclear tests for stockpile maintenance purposes, that the U.S. approach to maintaining confidence in stockpile safety and reliability has always relied on nontesting means, and that nuclear testing would add little to the Stockpile Stewardship Program in terms of maintaining confidence in the assessment of the existing stockpile.[13] The report also concluded that the United States has the technical capabilities to maintain confidence in the safety and reliability of its existing nuclear-weapon stockpile under a test ban, provided that adequate resources are made available and "properly focused on this task."[14]
Those resources, as expected, have been provided-and more. Between fiscal years 2001 and 2004, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons funding has risen by 19 percent to well more than $6 billion a year.[15] The secretaries of defense and energy have certified the safety and reliability of the stockpile every year, with no indication that this will change in the foreseeable future. Even the pit production issue cited by Kyl has apparently been addressed, at least enough to permit Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham to testify in March 2003 that the "NNSA is installing an interim pit-production capability at Los Alamos. Later this year Los Alamos will deliver a W88 pit that will meet all the quality manufacturing requirements for use in the stockpile."[16]
All of this confirms that the only realistic reason the United States would need to resume nuclear testing would be to confirm a new design. Unfortunately, this is precisely the direction some in Congress and the administration would like to head. In 2003, Congress repealed the 1993 Spratt-Furse amendment, which prohibited research and development leading to new types of nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy's fiscal year 2005 budget request called for $484.7 million through 2009 for research and development on a modified nuclear bunker-buster bomb and other "advanced concepts" designed to destroy deeply buried, heavily reinforced underground facilities. Congress also mandated that the time required to prepare the Nevada Test Site for testing be reduced to 18 months. Administration spokespersons continue to assert that there are no plans to resume testing, but these developments suggest an alarming trend in precisely this direction.
Impact on Nonproliferation
The third issue during the Senate debate in 1999 was the treaty's effect on curbing nuclear proliferation. CTBT supporters warned that rejecting the CTBT would undercut long-standing U.S. and international nuclear nonproliferation objectives, but critics suggested that its importance to nonproliferation was exaggerated. They argued that it would not stem proliferation because states do not need to test weapons built from proven designs and that the treaty would not add a new nonproliferation norm or legal barrier to proliferation because it would ban the testing of weapons that states are prohibited under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) from possessing in the first place. In many respects, this is true: a state with a proven design for a Hiroshima-type nuclear weapon, for example, and enough fissile material to make one could build such a bomb without testing it, and the NPT does prohibit the non-nuclear-weapon states from possessing nuclear weapons. The CTBT is intended to fortify the nonproliferation regime, however, by placing an additional barrier in front of those states seeking advanced nuclear weapons. Without the treaty, the international community is forced to fight that battle without one of its most important weapons.
In any case, although normative arguments such as these are difficult to prove or disprove, the past five years have shown that treaty supporters were correct on at least one key point: the decision not to ratify the treaty has undercut efforts to strengthen and expand the arms control treaty regime. The vote robbed the United States and the international community of the leverage needed to convince India and Pakistan to sign the test ban and halt the production of fissile material. Momentum toward strengthening the NPT regime, most notably by implementing the enhanced International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards protocol developed to strengthen NPT verification, has been undermined, and no additional multilateral arms control agreements have been concluded since the vote.
The U.S. failure to ratify the CTBT is not solely to blame for these developments, as many would have occurred under the Bush administration regardless of the vote. Nevertheless, in retrospect, the failure to ratify the CTBT was the first step by the United States toward abrogating its leadership of the international arms control treaty regime. Without that leadership, these and other nonproliferation efforts have clearly stalled.
Where Are We Headed?
Without U.S. ratification, CTBT entry into force remains a distant prospect. The lack of leadership from the United States has stymied efforts to bring the treaty into force. The Bush administration has taken nearly every opportunity to undercut the treaty, boycotting three consecutive conferences of CTBT states-parties, denying support to the CTBTO for onsite inspections, and voting or speaking against the CTBT in the UN General Assembly and the First Committee on Disarmament and International Security and during NPT meetings. The 11 other states that must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force share some of the burden, but little is likely to happen until the United States revises its position.
Not all CTBT news over the last five years has been bad, however. Despite the uncertainties over entry into force, the roster of states that have signed and ratified the treaty has grown steadily, demonstrating the depth of international commitment to bringing the treaty into force, universalizing it, and strengthening the international norm against nuclear testing. To date, 172 states have signed the treaty, and 119 have ratified it, including 67 that have done so since the Senate vote in 1999. This is an astonishing achievement considering that the treaty cannot enter into force without the United States.
Progress in building the IMS has also been impressive. When the system is complete, more than 85 countries will host 321 monitoring stations. The CTBTO Preparatory Commission, which has signed Facility Agreements with 30 states, recently announced that the IMS now monitors the entire globe.[17] This system, unprecedented in its comprehensiveness, sophistication, and effectiveness, is a noteworthy accomplishment and a valuable asset.
For the CTBT, the road ahead begins with the moratorium on nuclear testing. The United States has not conducted a nuclear test in 13 years, and none of the other NPT nuclear-weapon states have done so since 1996. Maintaining that status quo is crucial, as even a single test by one of these states would fracture the moratorium permanently, jeopardizing the treaty. Continued progress in universalizing the treaty and ensuring that the IMS is fully operation when the treaty enters into force is also essential.
The CTBTO must be fully funded so the technical means to monitor compliance remains in place. International support for the CTBT remains high, but states may eventually balk at contributing funds to implement a treaty that they believe may never enter into force. Following through on measures agreed to at the 2003 CTBT Entry Into Force Conference should be helpful in this regard. Of these, creating bilateral, regional, and multilateral initiatives to promote entry into force; establishing a trust fund to support outreach promoting the treaty; and continuing to promote the nonsecurity applications of the IMS should be particularly valuable.
Finally, proposals for provisional entry into force may also be worth considering, particularly if Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) wins the November election or the Bush administration moderates its anti-CTBT stance in a second term. Provided it is crafted in a way that avoids provoking the United States to withhold CTBTO funding or withdrawing its signature of the treaty, a protocol on provisional application by which the CTBT states-parties agree to permit all or most of the treaty to take effect pending formal entry into force could be a useful mechanism for further institutionalizing the treaty and promoting its universality.
Conclusion
The Senate's vote against ratification of the CTBT was one of the lowest moments in the history of international arms control. Although the principal arguments presented by critics of the treaty have been shown to be incorrect, entry into force remains out of reach. Nonetheless, considerable progress has been made in implementing and universalizing the treaty. If the international community continues and expands on these efforts, it will be well prepared to bring this crucial treaty into force when the prevailing climate changes.
ENDNOTES
1. Daryl Kimball, "What Went Wrong: Repairing the Damage to the CTBT," Arms Control Today, December 1999, pp. 3-9.
2. Jon Kyl, "Why the Senate Rejected the CTBT and the Implications of its Demise," Proliferation Roundtable speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 5, 2000.
3. "Bannergram," IRIS Newsletter 2000, no. 1, p. 27.
4. Stephen I. Schwartz, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), pp. 156-157 fn. 117.
5. "NRDC Nuclear Notebook: Known Nuclear Tests Worldwide, 1945-98," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998.
6. "Train Blast Eight Times Bigger Than Claimed by North Korea," BBC Monitoring International Reports, May 15, 2004.
7. Rob Edwards, "North Korea Blast Not a Nuclear Test," NewScientist.com, September 13, 2004; Christopher Torchia, "N. Korea Snubs N-test Speculation," Boston Globe, September 14, 2004.
8. Committee on Technical Issues Related to Ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002), p. 5.
9. Remarks by Senator Jon Kyl on the CTBT, Oct. 12, 1999, Congressional Record, 106th Congress, S12338-30, s12368-71.
10. Kyl, "Why the Senate Rejected the CTBT."
11. Ibid.
12. General John M. Shalikashvili (Ret.), Findings and Recommendations Concerning the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, January 4, 2001.
13. NAS CTBT report, p. 3.
14. Ibid., p. 34.
15. Christopher Paine, "Coddling the Nuclear Weapons Complex," Arms Control Today, May 2004, pp. 3-9.
16. Spencer Abraham, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, March 20, 2003.
17. David Ruppe, "Earth Fully Covered by Nuclear Test Surveillance System, Official Says," Global Security Newswire, September 17, 2004.
-------- u.n.
Pakistan refuses to let IAEA interview Dr Qadeer
The News International
October 01, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2004-daily/01-10-2004/main/main5.htm
VIENNA: Pakistan has refused to let the UN atomic watchdog interview nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the BBC on Thursday.
"We have not been allowed by Pakistan to talk to the man," ElBaradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a BBC World Service interview aired on Thursday.
It was the first time the IAEA has admitted that Pakistan is refusing to let it see Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Asked why President Musharraf reportedly said that nobody had asked to question Qadeer Khan, ElBaradei said: "I can tell my Pakistani friends that I will be happy to send a team tomorrow to talk to him if we can, absolutely."
ElBaradei said Qadeer Khan's network had "more than 30 companies and 30 countries all over the globe involved in this fantastic sophisticated illicit trafficking." But, he said, "as far as I know Khan has not talked to any non-Pakistani until now."
Pakistan has supplied results from sampling it has conducted itself, but has not allowed the IAEA inspectors into the country to do their own sampling, ElBaradei had said in a report earlier this month. He added the IAEA needed results from its own testing to be able to draw definitive conclusions.
-----
Access to Pakistani nuke scientist not possible: official
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001160352.bnx45bnb.html
Pakistan Friday said it would continue to cooperate with the United Nations global nuclear watchdog but that it would not allow it to interview the disgraced architect of the country's nuclear programme.
"Pakistan had extended cooperation to the IAEA and would continue to do so. However, access to a Pakistani scientist was not possible," a spokesman for Pakistan's foreign ministry said in a statement.
Pakistan, which is not a signatory to the global nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), would still cooperate with international efforts against the nuclear blackmarket, he said.
"Pakistan has full confidence in its own investigative system," the official added.
Pakistan has refused to let the International Atomic Energy Agencyinterview disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, ringleader of a smuggling network, agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the BBC Thursday.
ElBaradei said Khan's network had "more than 30 companies and 30 countries all over the globe involved in this fantastic sophisticated illicit trafficking."
Pakistan was rocked earlier this year when Khan publicly confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Khan was given a conditional pardon by President Pervez Musharraf, who insisted the proliferation was carried out by a handful of scientists without government involvement.
Pakistan's federal parliament last month approved legislation tightening export controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Radiation Levels Prompt Search
Atlantic Searched Near Where Bomb May Have Fallen in '58
By J.R. Roseberry
The Washington Post
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63419-2004Sep30.html
SAVANNAH, Ga., Sept. 30 -- A team of Air Force and government security officials, radiation experts and military divers converged on the Georgia coast Thursday to investigate the spot where a long-lost hydrogen bomb may be resting since it was dropped from a bomber in 1958.
The team dragged sensors in the water and the divers collected soil samples during the day-long search in Wassaw Sound, near the beach resort community of Tybee Island, where the Olympic sailing competition was held in 1996.
The bomb, a 7,600-pound Mark 15, which has been described as a hundred times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, was intentionally jettisoned from a B-47 bomber after a midair collision with a jet fighter.
An intensive 90-day search conducted at the time failed to turn up any sign of the bomb, which has been officially listed as "irretrievably lost." Air Force officials have said that the bomb does not carry the plutonium needed for a nuclear blast but that it does carry 400 pounds of explosives.
Air Force officials said the current investigation will cover the area where a private group headed by Derek Duke, a retired Air Force pilot who lives nearby, recently detected high radiation in a football-field-size area in shallow water 12 miles east of Savannah.
But the officials said they were not searching for the bomb and instead were trying to verify the high radiation readings and determine whether they came from a natural source or from contamination and whether the contamination was caused by the missing bomb.
The investigation was undertaken "so that we can ensure the safety of the people of Savannah and Georgia is maintained," said Billy W. Mullins, an Air Force nuclear weapons adviser who headed up Thursday's investigation. "That has always been our priority."
Duke, who located the area using coordinates provided by the retired pilot of the B-47 bomber that jettisoned the bomb said he would not have given his information to government officials and urged them to undertake the current investigation "if I was not fairly certain" the bomb has been found.
During the past four years, Duke has repeatedly urged the government to conduct another search for the bomb to determine if it poses a danger to the Southeast coast.
Duke and several members of his private search team, including radiation detection expert Joe Eddlemon, who took the measurements the government is attempting to verify, went with the Air Force team Thursday.
Eddlemon, owner of Pulcir Inc. in Oak Ridge, Tenn., was previously employed at the nuclear facility there. He said his readings reflected 3,000 times the normal radiation around the spot where Duke believes the bomb is buried.
The bomb fell when the B-47 pilot, Air Force Col. Howard Richardson, dropped it over the water after his collision with a fighter jet during a training mission. He told Air Force officials he was afraid the bomb would break loose from his damaged plane when he attempted to land at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah.
Richardson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for successfully landing the bomber.
The Air Force launched an extensive search that received wide attention at the time. But even as that search was underway, another plane from Hunter accidentally dropped another nuclear bomb. It fell on a farm near Florence, S.C., and though its nuclear components were not armed, the explosives in the bomb detonated on impact, creating a 30-foot-deep and 70-foot-wide crater.
It destroyed a farmer's home and injured the farmer and five members of his family. It also damaged several cars, five other houses and a church.
Air Force personnel recovered hundreds of bomb fragments during their blast site cleanup and inhabitants of the area were monitored for radiation exposure for several months after the explosion.
That incident relegated the bomb dropped near Tybee Island to a dim memory and occasional cocktail conversation on the island for more than 40 years.
Duke first became interested in the lost nuclear weapon four years ago when he spotted a reference to it on the Internet.
After studying information that included a recently declassified 1966 document prepared by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy W.J. Howard indicating the bomb was fully armed and capable of nuclear detonation, Duke approached Air Force officials urging them to either conduct another search with modern equipment or cover his expenses to conduct a search on his own.
The officials said the bomb posed little danger because it had only a low risk of leakage of the highly radioactive material it contains and should be left alone. In a report three years ago, the Air Force said the bomb was probably under 15 feet of mud in as much as 40 feet of water.
But Duke's latest radiation findings sparked new interest in the site from the Air Force and Thursday's search.
--------
Military Seeks Nuclear Bomb Lost in 1958
October 1, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/national/01bomb.html
LITTLE TYBEE ISLAND, Ga., Sept. 30 (AP) - With boats dragging sensors and divers scooping underwater soil samples, federal experts searched Thursday for radioactive clues that might help it find a nuclear bomb that has been lost off the Georgia coast for 46 years.
It is the first time the military has sought signs of the 7,600-pound hydrogen bomb in the murky waters of Wassaw Sound since a crippled B-47 bomber dumped the Mark-15 bomb into the sea near Savannah in 1958. A team of 20 experts in nuclear weapons, gamma spectroscopy and underwater salvage confined their search to an area roughly the size of a football field, marked by buoys floating on the surface.
That is where Derek Duke, a retired Air Force pilot who has doggedly pursued the lost bomb for five years, said his searches had detected higher-than-normal radiation levels less than a mile from the southern tip of Little Tybee Island.
The Air Force says the bomb is incapable of a nuclear explosion because it lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger one. Still, it contains about 400 pounds of conventional explosives and an undisclosed amount of uranium.
The bomb was dropped into Wassaw Sound in February 1958 during a training flight when the bomber carrying it collided with a fighter jet.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Accused of'Propaganda Campaign'
By AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer
Oct 1, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_A_CHALLENGERS_CALL?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
HERAT, Afghanistan (AP) -- The main rival to interim President Hamid Karzai charged Friday that a government "propaganda campaign" is trying to trick Afghans into thinking Karzai is the only one of 18 candidates to have Washington's backing for the Oct. 9 presidential election.
More than 1,000 people jammed the main mosque in this western city to proclaim former Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni "our great leader" and vent their frustration at what many consider Karzai's kowtowing to American interests.
"The government has been running a propaganda campaign, a war of rumor, to make the people feel that America would only support one candidate and the others were doomed to defeat," Qanooni told the cheering crowd, noting U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had said publicly that Washington was not playing favorites.
Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik who was a senior official in the northern alliance that helped drive the Taliban from power in 2001, said he had spoken to Khalilzad three times.
But then he chided the front-running Karzai for working too closely with the energetic ambassador, who is suspected by many Afghans of acting as a puppet-master orchestrating events behind the scenes.
"Afghans don't want a leader imposed on us from abroad," Qanooni told the crowd. "I want Afghanistan to stand side by side with its neighbors, proud and peaceful, like one family, not with the demeanor of a servant,"
Karzai, a member of Afghanistan's big Pashtun community, is expected to easily out poll his rivals Oct. 9, a fact all but conceded by Qanooni. But Qanooni said that if the 17 other candidates could force a runoff by denying Karzai the majority needed for outright victory, they could then defeat him by uniting around a single candidate, presumably himself.
Khalilzad has acknowledged meeting privately with Qanooni and other major candidates, but he denies widespread rumors that he tried to persuade some of them to quit the race. "I have never pressured them to withdraw from the race in favor of Karzai," he said Monday.
Few rallies have been held in the campaign. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek leader challenging Karzai, drew about 8,000 people in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif this week, and Karzai's vice president, Karim Khalili, spoke to 2,000 people at a Shiite Muslim mosque in the capital Friday.
Without mentioning Karzai by name, Khalili, an ethnic Hazara, said the election was a major step toward bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan. "All Afghan people should participate in the election. If they don't, I'm sure those who favor war and all the problems of the past will prevail," he said.
A large crowd followed Qanooni through Herat as he visited dignitaries, including former Gov. Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik warlord removed by Karzai last month. Khan was accused by international human rights groups of torture and political repression, but he also was credited with overseeing Afghanistan's safest, most prosperous major city.
Most in crowd said they backed Qanooni. "Karzai is just a puppet," said Saeed Usman, a 50-year-old shopkeeper.
But some said they would back Karzai, a ubiquitous figure on the world stage in his caracol hat and Uzbek cape. "I'm voting for Karzai because the international community respects him," said Abdul Razaq.
Karzai has rarely ventured out in public since formal campaigning began last month, though he inaugurated a museum in Kabul this week. He escaped a Sept. 16 attack on a U.S. military helicopter flying him to the eastern city of Gardez.
Meanwhile, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, told The Associated Press the military had not seen the feared widespread attacks by militants aimed at disrupting the election and that there were no signs rebels were plotting major violence on polling day.
"What we've predicted as worst-case scenarios haven't played out," Olson said.
Also Friday, thousands of Afghan refugees in Pakistan signed up to vote on the opening day of a drive that seeks to register 800,000 people in three days.
Afghan men and women turned out in force in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, but women weren't seen at refugee camps around the socially conservative northwestern city of Peshawar.
"Men are coming to register, but women aren't," said Ghulam Farooq, an election official at Azakhel camp.
In Afghanistan, voter registration was conducted for months and 10.6 million people signed up, more than 40 percent of them women.
-------- africa
Nigerian troops raid Delta villages for illegal arms
(AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001171510.ww52ijll.html
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - Nigerian troops were Friday combing villages and creeks for illegal arms in the troubled Niger Delta, where rebels have threatened the oil industry, a military spokesman said.
"We have intensified cordon and search operations in the swamps, villages and creeks. Our efforts have paid off," naval Lieutenant Commander Yakubu Agwom told AFP by telephone from his base in Buguma, west of Port Harcourt, the hub of Nigeria's vast oil resources.
Buguma is the home town of rebel leader Mujahid Dokubo Asari, who is fighting for a share of Nigeria's oil wealth and who arrived in the capital Abuja Wednesday for peace talks with government officials.
Agwon said security men raided a village near Buguma early this week and found some weapons.
"A cache of arms and ammunitions such as AK-47 rifles were found in the village. Although the villagers claimed the weapons were for self-defence against attack by armed gangs terrorising them, they cooperated with security agents by surrendering them," he said.
He said ethnic militia and cult gangs such as Dey Gbam, Greenlanders, Egbesu Boys, Bush Boys, Icelanders, Elegamface and Okrika Boys were stockpiling arms to fight for supremacy in the region.
The spokesman of the special military Joint Task Force (JTF) deployed to the troubled areas, Captain Onyema Kanu, said that current operation coded "Operation Flush Out 3", will continue despite ongoing talks between President Olusegun Obasanjo and rebel leader Mujahid Dokubo Asari.
"The JTF has a clear and broad mandate to rid the region of armed gang violence and bunkering. The operation will continue in spite of the talks unless we are otherwise directed," he told reporters in Port Harcourt.
The armed struggle is financed by illegal bunkering -- stealing of crude oil from tapped pipelines before selling it to unscrupulous local and foreign buyers.
Officials say Nigeria loses some 50,000 barrels of oil daily to smugglers and sea pirates operating in the hundreds of creeks and swamps dotting the Niger delta.
Some 500 people have died in gang violence in the past month in Port Harcourt and its surrounding creeks, according to Amnesty International, but the government said only 13 were killed.
Rivers State governor Peter Odili was expected to adress a mass rally Friday during which he would attempt to douse the tensions arising from the fighting, his spokesman, Emmanuel Okah, said.
The rally has organised to mark Nigeria's 44th independence anniversary.
Asari's Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF), which late Monday threatened oil installations and asked foreign oil workers to quit the region, is one of the militias fighting for supremacy over control of the west African country's illegal oil trafficking in the area.
The group claims to be fighting for the rights of the ethnic Ijaws living around the centre of Nigeria's oil industry, which turns out about 2.3 million barrels per day.
Nigeria, Africa's largest oil exporter, derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange revenue from oil extracted from the Delta region.
The unrest in Nigeria has sent jitters to the international oil market where a barrel is hovering around 50 dollars.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo warned Friday that his government would not tolerate any act of "undue militancy" in the Niger Delta.
"Government is taking appropriate steps to stem the tide of undue militancy and we are confident that reason and the law will prevail," he said in a broadcast to mark the anniversary of independence from Britain.
"Government will not tolerate in any way or form any act that would mortgage or compromise the interest of the majority."
On Friday, the presence of troops was very visible in Port Harcourt but there was little or no celebration for the independence anniversary.
-----
West African armies and France sign up to joint exercises
COTONOU (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001162358.ki6a6j61.html
Military officers from 15 west African countries and France on Friday completed preparations for a new round of training exercises in joint peacekeeping, due to start in Benin at the end of next month.
A meeting in Benin's economic capital Cotonou has since Monday gathered dozens of officers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), France and several other countries to prepare for the fourth training exercises of their kind. The two generals in charge of Recamp IV -- an acronym for Strengthening African Peace-Keeping Capabilities, France's commander of joint chiefs of staff Bruno Neveux and Benin's Fernand Amoussou, chief of general staff, on Friday formally signed the plan.
"This is an exercise which shows the need and importance of a global approach to crisis management in Africa," General Neveux told AFP. The Recamp IV exercise will last from November 29 to December 10.
Military officers from several countries in Europe, Asia and the United States also went to Cotonou for the preparations, the French military officer in charge of planning, Colonel Eric Guillemin, said earlier in the week.
Previous joint exercises have been held, at France's initiative, in 1997, 2000 and 2003.
The concept of cooperation between French and west African troops has been applied in a real conflict in Ivory Coast, a country divided since September 2002 by civil war.
French and west African soldiers were deployed to patrol ceasefire lines in Ivory Coast between the south, which is in the hands of government forces, and the north, which is controlled by rebels.
A peace pact signed in 2003 to end the war and bring rebels into the Ivorian government has not been fully implemented.
The west African side of the peacekeeping operation has since passed into the hands of the United Nations.
ECOWAS members are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
----
Sudan Accepts International Force Mandate
October 1, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Sudan-Darfur.html?pagewanted=all
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Sudan's foreign minister pledged Thursday to allow more African troops and police to help end the conflict in Darfur, responding to international demands for quick action to protect civilians.
Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters after addressing a closed-door meeting of the Security Council that he discussed the issue of an expanded African Union force in Darfur with African Union officials ``just a few days ago.''
His comments came after the Security Council approved a resolution authorizing a beefed-up African force with a broader mandate and a call Thursday by U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour for international police to work in tadem with Sudanese police whom she described as ineffective.
When the new AU troops arrive, he said, ``they're going to bring more than a thousand police together with the monitors in order to work with the Sudanse police officers for protection and checking ans so on.''
The Sudanese minister spoke to the council hours after members heard a sobering and dire report by two top human rights experts, Arbour and U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Juan Mendez.
While stopping short of classifying the situation in Darfur as a genocide, Mendez said that crimes against humanity and war crimes ``probably occured on a large and systematic scale.''
Mendez also said that the ``climate of impunity'' in the beleaguered region is such that ``we have not turned the corner on preventing genocide from happening in the future, or even in the near future.''
The AU currently has about 80 military observers in Darfur -- a region about the size of France -- protected by just over 300 soldiers, monitoring a rarely observed cease-fire signed in April by the government and rebels.
Last week, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who heads the African Union, said the 53-nation body can quickly mobilize up to 5,000 troops to help end the looting and killing in Darfur but it needs hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy the force.
The Sudanese minister said the government would welcome an expanded AU contingent and ``if they want 5,000 (troops), it's no problem.''
Arbour said an international police force was needed at refugee camps because the deployment of Sudanese police has done little to restore the faith of the 1.2 million people displaced by fighting and is contributing to the ``climate of impunity reigning in Darfur today.''
U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said ``the key to peace in Darfur'' is an agreement between the government and rebels in southern Sudan -- and he said Ismail agreed with this assessment.
Peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya, have broken down, and Danforth urged both sides to return and conclude negotiations. It ``can be done in a matter of weeks and it must be done for the sake of the people in Darfur,'' he said. Algeria's U.N. Ambassador, Abdallah Baali, said Ismail indicated the expansion of the AU force in the country could happen as early as Oct. 7 and that the Naivasha negotiations should also resume by that date.
-------- arms
China hits U.S. sales to Taiwan
October 01, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040930-114637-2742r.htm
The United States and China clashed yesterday over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, with China's foreign minister saying that a U.S. law allowing for such sales violates Washington's commitments to Beijing.
The bitter disagreement was expressed publicly after a meeting at the State Department between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing.
"We are firmly opposed to the sales of weapons by any foreign country to Taiwan, which is a part of China, because we don't think it is in the interest of our peaceful efforts towards the resolution of the Taiwan question," Mr. Li told reporters at the State Department after the meeting.
"And eventually, it will not serve the interests of those countries who are prepared to sell weapons to Taiwan," he added.
His remarks came two days after the new representative in the United States from the Republic of China (Taiwan) told The Washington Times that the Pentagon plans to build eight diesel-electric submarines for Taiwan as part of an $18 billion arms package.
Mr. Powell countered the minister's remarks by citing Washington's "obligations under our domestic law with respect to the Taiwan Relations Act," which provides for aiding Taiwan's defense.
"We always measure what is sold to Taiwan on the basis of what they need for their self-defense, and I think our policy has served both nations, the United States and China, very, very well - and Taiwan very, very well - over the course of a number of years," the secretary said.
Mr. Li rejected the domestic-legislation argument, saying, "In any country, its domestic law should not go above its international commitments."
But Mr. Powell said the Taiwan Relations Act is "not, in any way, inconsistent with our 'one China' policy and ... the three communiques."
The act, passed in 1979 as the United States was switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to mainland China, provided for continued arms sales to assure Taiwan's defense.
The communiques are three separate agreements between the United States and China. The third communique, approved by President Reagan in 1982, accepted the "one China" policy agreed upon in 1972. On arms sales, the communique said the United States would work to reduce and eventually eliminate such sales.
The United States, which has not had full diplomatic relations with Taiwan since 1979, is still the island's main arms supplier.
China considers Taiwan a part of its territory and has threatened to use force against any attempt for independence.
Mr. Li warned yesterday that the continued weapons sales to Taiwan do not "serve the interest of peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits."
"We will never, ever allow anyone to use any means to separate Taiwan, which is the inalienable part of the Chinese territory, from the rest of our great motherland," he said.
In 2001, President Bush agreed to sell Taiwan eight diesel-electric submarines, 12 P-3C anti-submarine planes and four Kidd-class destroyers.
The deal has been approved by the Taipei government and is expected to go before the legislature later this year.
In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, David Tawei Lee, the new head of the Taiwan office in Washington, said the eight submarines will be built "probably in Mississippi."
The United States no longer builds diesel submarines, and other nations that do - notably Germany and the Netherlands - were not willing to take the risk of angering China.
"The Americans will have to start from scratch," said Mr. Lee, adding that the shipyard - most likely Ingalls in Pascagoula, Miss. - would have to purchase the blueprints abroad.
Mr. Lee was quoted in the Taiwanese press yesterday as saying that Mississippi was one of the possible locations, but it was too early to discuss details before the vote in the legislature.
A State Department official said yesterday that the Pentagon has been looking for a way to "make the submarines available" to Taiwan, but that he did not know whether a decision had been made.
Mr. Powell and Mr. Li also discussed their mutual efforts to reconvene six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. A new round was supposed to take place in September.
"There have emerged some new complicating factors and new difficulties," Mr. Li said without elaborating. "Actually, this has required all of us to continue to adopt a more patient and more creative approach in finding a solution through peaceful means to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula."
Asked what those complications were, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher later said: "The complications are that the North Koreans didn't show up in September. ... There were no complications from our side."
-------- britain
Party Critics Urge Blair to Stand Up to Bush
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 1, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63510-2004Sep30.html
BRIGHTON, England -- Timothy Garton Ash, an international relations expert at Oxford University, drew rueful chuckles the other day at a panel discussion here when he dubbed Prime Minister Tony Blair's approach to the Bush administration "the inimitable Jeeves school of foreign policy."
Britain, Ash said, "is the wise old butler who stands behind this idiot nincompoop in the White House and is impeccably loyal in public but in private whispers in his ear: 'Is that wise, sir? Do you really want to invade Iraq?' "
The shadow of Iraq hung like an ominous cloud over the annual conference of Blair's ruling Labor Party this past week. But the bigger cloud for many here was the growing realization that President Bush could be headed for reelection in November, transforming what they had hoped would be a one-term aberration into a two-term presidency.
In the backroom meetings and panel discussions that accompany this annual ritual, many politicians, academics and analysts expressed dread about the likelihood of a Bush victory. "I'm worried the transatlantic alliance won't survive," said Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chairman of the government's top secret Joint Intelligence Committee. She added, "There is a wide perception this is an America we don't particularly like."
In the immediate aftermath of a Bush victory, these British observers warned, the United States would be likely to launch a new military offensive against insurgents in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities. They said their longer-term fear was that a second-term Bush administration might initiate a bombing campaign against potential nuclear facilities in Iran, or support Israel's doing so. And they wondered whether Blair would again feel compelled to follow in the administration's wake, as he did in committing British troops to Iraq.
"People in Europe can't bury their heads, clutch the table and wait for this nightmare to be over," said Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper.
Freedland confessed he was mildly embarrassed to have once written a book titled "Bring Home the Revolution: How Britain Can Live the American Dream," which praised America's dynamic, upwardly mobile society. "It's awfully hard to be an Americano-phile in 2004," he told the audience. "This is a loathed administration."
Blair has been Bush's staunchest foreign ally, sending British forces to campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Britain still maintains about 9,000 troops. In his speech to the conference, he acknowledged that many members of his party, which defines itself as socially progressive, have come to believe he has been "just pandering to George Bush" and a conservative Republican administration they find ideologically repugnant. He promised them he would tackle issues such as global warming and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"But understand this reality," he added. "Little of it will happen except in alliance with the United States of America." That line was greeted with virtual silence.
Critics cited the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a clear example of the one-sidedness of Blair's partnership with Bush. The prime minister's aides say Blair has continually pressed Bush to intensify diplomacy to bring about reconciliation between the two sides, insisting that the issue remains just as important as Iraq. Blair promised the annual party conference two years ago that Israel and the Palestinians would begin final-status talks on a permanent peace settlement within six months. It never happened -- in large part, critics contend, because Bush failed to make the peace process a priority.
"On the Middle East peace process, Tony Blair has been naive all the way through," said John Kampfner, political editor of the New Statesman, a pro-Labor magazine, and author of "Blair's Wars," an account of the prime minister's foreign policy. "He hoped he got through to George Bush, and that George Bush would get through to Ariel Sharon," the Israeli prime minister. But the Bush administration instead had pursued its own perceived self-interests, Kampfner told one panel, which included allowing Sharon relatively free rein.
Blair's political allies conceded that many things had not gone according to plan. But, they argued, Britain has no choice but to stay close to any American administration.
"Too many people in this country want to make America the new enemy," Dennis MacShane, minister for Europe, told the same panel. Europe, he said, would be better off concentrating on improving its institutions and diplomacy and becoming a more equal partner to the United States, both economically and militarily.
There was widespread agreement among participants at the party conference that the Jeeves approach would no longer suffice and that Blair needed to dissent in public. Emma Burnell of the Fabian Society, a venerable Labor Party research group, said Britons were longing for a "Love Actually" moment -- referring to the scene in last year's romantic comedy in which a British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, dresses down an arrogant American president (Billy Bob Thornton) at a news conference.
"The United Kingdom has to stop the tactic of arguing with the Americans in private and agreeing in public -- that's out," said Neville-Jones. "We've actually got to come out and show our colors."
-------- business
Former Pentagon official gets nine months in prison in Boeing scandal
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001200419.3koayis1.html
Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force official charged in a deal that allowed her to get a job with Boeing after overseeing a controversial lease of tanker planes, was sentenced Friday to nine months in prison, officials said.
Druyun, 56, had pleaded guilty earlier this year to a criminal conspiracy charge for her role in the deal that gave her a lucrative job with the aerospace company after she pressed for a lease agreement on refueling aircraft.
A spokeswoman for the US Attorney's office in Alexandria, Virginia, said Druyun's sentence also calls for seven months' community confinement after her release from prison, three years' probation, 150 hours of community service and a 5,000-dollar fine.
"Darleen Druyun owed her primary allegiance to the American taxpayer. Instead she put her own personal interests ahead of the United States Air Force," US Attorney Paul McNulty said.
Druyun, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and management, helped negotiate the 2002 deal with the Boeing Company to lease 100 Boeing 767 tanker aircraft for the Air Force for more than 20 billion dollars.
She accepted a job with Boeing in January 2003 as vice president and deputy general manager of missile defense systems.
Prosecutors said Druyun's daughter, herself a Boeing employee, contacted a senior executive of Boeing in September 2002, setting in motion a process in which Druyun worked out a deal to retire from the Air Force and accept the senior position at Boeing. The scandal forced a high-level shakeup at Boeing and prompted fresh reviews of the lease plan, which some lawmakers criticized as a sweetheart deal for Boeing.
Championed by the Air Force as a way to begin replacing its aging KC-135 fleet more quickly, the contract was fiercely opposed by Republican Senator John McCain and others, who said it would be more economical to purchase aircraft.
In May, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the plan on hold until further studies are completed in November.
A Pentagon advisory board recently concluded there is no compelling material or financial reason to replace the Air Force's refueling jets.
Some critics of the deal said the program should be reopened to allow Europe's Airbus, which lost out for the contract, to submit another bid.
-------- iraq
Iraq takes charge of defending its sea-borders
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001190457.5o3ak5n9.html
Iraq officially took control of defending its coastal waters in the oil-rich south on Friday with the launch of the small Iraqi navy, the US-led military said.
Formed in January, the 412-strong Iraqi Coastal Defence Force (ICDF) has been trained by British, Australian, US and Dutch troops.
"Iraqis have taken responsibility for protecting territorial waters today, and actual work will begin tomorrow," Colonel Hameed Balafam, commander of the ICDF, said in a statement.
The fledgling navy set sail at a ceremony to mark its launch in the southern port of Umm Qasr, which was attended by Iraqi and US-led military officials.
It will be in charge of protecting a majority of the country's all-important oil exports which have been the target of a spate of devastating sabotage attacks in recent months, the statement said.
"Our first mission will be to protect oil ports in Basra and Khor al-Amaya from saboteurs and infiltrators," said Balafam.
"I'm fully confident because most of the Iraqi Coastal Defense Force personnel are from the former Iraqi navy and I'm confident about their skills."
-----
U.S.-Led Force Says It Took Half of Iraqi City Held by Insurgents
October 1, 2004
By RICK LYMAN and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/01CND-SAMMY.html?oref=login&hp
SAMARRA, Iraq, Oct. 1 - American commanders said today that a large American and Iraqi force had taken control of at least half of this insurgent-ridden city, claiming they had killed more than 100 guerrillas in what is shaping up to be one of the largest operations since the war began.
More than 5,000 troops, including 3,000 Americans, attacked the city from three sides late Thursday, quickly seizing the main government buildings on the city's northwest end. American and Iraqi forces that numbered about 2,000 men took control of the Golden Mosque - a Shiite holy site visited annually by thousands of pilgrims - thereby staving off a repeat of the siege of Najaf, where insurgents commandeered the Imam Ali Shrine to draw out the fighting there.
The assault represented the first major effort by American and Iraqi forces to reclaim a series of areas that have fallen into the hands of insurgents ahead of the national elections scheduled to take place here in January.
The Americans said that one soldier, from the First Infantry Division, had been killed in the fighting and that four others were wounded.
American and Iraqi soldiers began sweeping the neighborhoods freshly under their control, carrying out hundreds of house-to-house searches in pursuit of suspected insurgents. Their main focus was the city's southeastern side, where several insurgents are believed to have taken up positions. By nightfall, the American and Iraqi forces prepared for hit-and-run attacks.
American and Iraqi officials said their plan was to flush the insurgents from the city, which had fallen under their control in recent months, re-establish government control and then pull the American troops back once the situation stabilized.
Four battalions of American troops from the First Infantry Division, backed by two battalions of Iraqi soldiers, began moving toward the city Thursday evening under cover of heavy fire. As midnight passed, the bang of exploding shells could be heard nearly two miles outside the city limits.
A statement released by the American military early today said that American and Iraqi forces had succeeded in entering the city and securing government and police buildings. The statement said the forces were acting "in response to repeated and unprovoked attacks by anti-Iraqi forces."
"Unimpeded access throughout the city for Iraqi security forces and multinational forces is non-negotiable," the statement said.
American officers said they were acting at the direct request of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
This city of 214,000 people, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, fell to the insurgents over the summer, one of a number of areas in the Sunni triangle north and west of Baghdad where the Americans and the Iraqi government have ceded control in recent months. As the operation got under way, American commanders said they aimed to take the city away from the insurgents and hold onto it.
"We are going to go in there and quiet it down," one American officer as his unit got ready to move.
The fighting follows several recent attempts to reassert control over the city through peaceful means. As recently as Tuesday, a large group of insurgents drove through the city in a convoy of about 20 trucks, some of them waving the banner of One God and Jihad, the battle flag of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab Al Zarqawi.
The operation that began Thursday appeared to be the first directed at retaking the areas in advance of nationwide elections set for January. Iraqi and American officials have said they intend to reassert control over all of the areas that have slipped from their control, so that voting will be open to nearly all Iraqi voters.
At the moment, most of the areas beyond American and Iraqi government control are dominated by Sunni Arabs. The fear is that an election without a significant portion of Sunni Arab voters taking part would lack the legitimacy needed to unite the country and advance the democratic process.
On Sept. 9, American forces, after long talks with leaders of Samarra, went back into the city without firing a shot, reoccupying the city government building and resuscitating the local government there. American commanders there said they hoped their toehold in the city would be beginning of the restoration of Iraqi government control, but a series of firefights in recent days apparently dispelled those thoughts.
Troubling signs surfaced recently that the insurgents were getting stronger. American intelligence officers said they were concerned that insurgents in Samarra and Falluja had begun to cooperate, via the road that connects the two cities. At the same time, a group of insurgent leaders in Samarra declared their allegiance to the leaders in Falluja, called the Council of Holy Warriors.
Falluja, the scene of heavy fighting before the Americans decided to cede it to insurgents in April, has become the center of anti-government activity in the country.
"Falluja is a command and control center for the insurgency," a senior Iraqi official said Thursday.
--------
Dozens of Children Killed in Iraq Attack
Bomb Explodes at Baghdad Ceremony; U.S. Troops Launch Offensive on Samarra
By Karl Vick, Khalid Saffar and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63401-2004Sep30?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 1 -- The wails echoed off the tile surfaces of the emergency room at Yarmouk Hospital. Amid the blood and stretchers, Majeed Aboud turned his tear-stained face to the body of his 5-year-old son, Mohammad, one of at least 34 children killed when a car bomb exploded as they gathered around U.S. soldiers handing out candy and cakes in a southern Baghdad neighborhood.
The child's thin body was covered by a sheet. The sheet was covered with blood.
"My boy was playing around with other kids when the first car bomb exploded," Aboud said when he recovered the ability to speak. "I brought him here, but they could do nothing for him."
"Why? Why?" a mother asked as a doctor bent over the bloodied chest of Russul Abbas, whose entire front was perforated by bits of metal smaller than dimes. "Why does this have to happen to my 8-year-old kid?"
Even for September, a month that saw more than 40 car bombs detonated in Iraq, Thursday's violence was extraordinary for its callousness and the number of innocents killed. At least 41 people died, including an American soldier. U.S. forces bombed Fallujah and mounted a surprise offensive overnight to retake Samarra, another restive Sunni Triangle city. Arabic-language news channels reported that kidnappers claimed to have taken 10 new captives.
But it was the young victims -- by far the most children killed in one incident since the U.S.-led invasion 17 months ago -- who galvanized the capital.
Most had gathered around American soldiers after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new sewage treatment plant, an event designed to show that not all the news in Iraq is bad. The soldiers were passing out sweets to the children.
An officer of the Iraqi National Guard, which was responsible for securing the area, said a Nissan pickup truck parked near the plant apparently was detonated by remote control. Half an hour later, as parents carried away the wounded and ambulances pushed through the throngs who rushed to help, a gray Daewoo sedan nudged into the crowd and exploded.
Ten Americans were reported wounded at the scene, two of them seriously. Afterward, as volunteers searched the ground for bits of flesh to fold into plastic bags, outrage so often directed at U.S. forces in the wake of such attacks was thrown wholly toward those most directly responsible.
"What kind of resistance is this?" Majeed Hameed, who lost a child, shouted again and again at the hospital. "Why do they attack children?"
Late in the day, a Web site known as a clearinghouse for Islamic militants posted an assertion of responsibility for three "heroic operations" by Monotheism and Jihad, the organization headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who U.S. officials say has links to al Qaeda.
The claim jibed with the number of sites car-bombed Thursday.
The first blast occurred about 8:30 a.m. outside the municipal building in Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad suburb where a sprawling prison is located. As three U.S. military combat vehicles entered the municipal compound, a truck laden with gasoline and explosives exploded, killing a U.S. soldier and two Iraqi police officers and damaging a heavily armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle, according to the U.S. military. Three Americans and 10 Iraqis were wounded.
"I could see bodies flying in the air," said Salman Fadhel, a municipal worker. "When I heard the blast, I thought it was doomsday."
Another car bomb exploded in Tall Afar, the city in the far north where insurgents and U.S. forces clashed for several days this month. The suicide bomber targeted a passing police patrol, killing four Iraqis and wounding 16, according to the manager of the local hospital.
"We are obviously seeing a major onslaught by the terrorists on Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities," Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister of Iraq's interim government, said at a news conference.
Salih and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who spoke in London, emphasized that the attacks would not dissuade Iraqi authorities from going forward with national elections promised for January.
But Salih also indicated that a military effort to reclaim areas now held by insurgents -- most notably the western city of Fallujah -- would go forward in October, at least a month earlier than senior U.S. officers in Iraq have indicated in private conversations.
"Our hope is that we will regain control of these situations as soon as possible," Salih said. "The month of October begins tomorrow. And we hope to regain control of these areas before the month of November."
That schedule appears ambitious, given what U.S. and Iraqi officials have described as deficits in both the numbers and the training of Iraqi soldiers and other security personnel. The lack of training was vividly illustrated by Iraqi National Guardsmen at the Baghdad ceremony. They overlooked the truck bomb even though the vehicle was parked inside an area that supposedly had been secured, an oversight acknowledged by Lt. Ahmad Saad, a guardsman.
Readiness of the Iraqi forces is crucial to restoring at least nominal government control in disputed areas. While U.S. troops would be expected to carry out assaults on insurgent strongholds, the task of enforcing civil order after any battle would fall to Iraqis, senior U.S. and Iraqi officials have said.
"We still need time to fully equip and train our security forces," Salih acknowledged.
Within hours, the U.S. 4th Infantry Division appeared to make good on Salih's vow in Samarra, a city about 65 miles north of Baghdad that has been largely under insurgent control in recent months. A military statement issued in the early hours of Friday said troops from two Iraqi battalions -- one regular army, the other national guard -- and the 1st Infantry Division "secured key government buildings and locations."
Several battalions from the 4th Infantry Division entered the city at 6 p.m. Thursday, and encountered what a spokesman described as intermittent but never-heavy resistance through the night. The first clashes were from the bridge into the city over the Tigris, from which 4th Infantry Division forces engaged and destroyed three speed boats and killed four insurgents firing from aboard hem. Two other boats were later destroyed as well.
"There was sporadic gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade fire at elements throughout the city," said Staff Sgt. Robert Powell, a 4th Infrantry Division spokesman. "It was really scattered throughout the city."
Powell said the military estimated 71 enemy dead and one wounded, with no reported casualties among the 4th Infantry Division or the Iraqi forces.
Meanwhile on Thursday, U.S. Marines who have not entered Fallujah since April continued to call in airstrikes on buildings in Fallujah where informants say Zarqawi's forces are gathering. At 5 a.m., U.S. bombs leveled two houses in the central neighborhood of Officers. Hospital officials said the dead included a woman and a child, as well as Iraqi fighters.
"I knew they would attack my house because my neighbor hosts suspect guests, and cars without license plates park in front of his house," said Ali Eid Dulaimi, whose house was destroyed. He blamed the insurgents.
"They caused the killing of my mother and nephew," Dulaimi said. "I will not live in Fallujah anymore."
But proximity to Americans also carries profound risks, as Iraqis have learned. In Amel, the Baghdad neighborhood whose name means "worker," Amer Abed forbade his children to attend the plant-opening ceremony being held 30 yards from their home.
"I told them not to go, because I felt something bad would happen," he said. "There were too many Americans gathering."
The first explosion spewed shrapnel into Abed's yard, and it penetrated the leg of his daughter, Farah, who was playing outside. After he carried his crying child inside, the second explosion broke the windows of his house.
"I am one of those who hate the Americans and reject the idea that they are here, but attacking them while they were among innocent people is considered a big crime," said Abed, 46. "I understand that the resistance wants to get rid of the Americans, but this is not the right way to do it."
-------- israel / palestine
19 Palestinians Killed in Gaza
Israeli Official: Major Offensive at Hand
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61738-2004Sep30.html
JERUSALEM, Sept. 30 -- Israeli troops pushed into the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday in a major campaign to stop Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli targets. In brief clashes and sustained fighting, at least 19 Palestinians and three Israelis were killed, and more than 120 Palestinians and at least seven Israeli soldiers were wounded, according to Israeli military officials, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses.
The fiercest battles occurred just north of Gaza City, in and around the Jabalya refugee camp, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and a stronghold of Palestinian guerrilla groups. Near Jabalya's marketplace and an adjacent school, a shell fired by an Israeli tank killed at least seven Palestinians and wounded 20, the highest casualty count of any incident Thursday. Another Israeli tank shell killed four Palestinians in the camp's eastern sector.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the tank targeted a group of Palestinians who had fired an explosive device at Israeli troops, injuring three soldiers. Palestinian witnesses said the group consisted mostly of stone-throwers and bystanders.
In two days of fighting, at least 27 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed.
Israel's incursion into Gaza follows a recently intensified campaign of missile and mortar attacks by Palestinian groups against Jewish settlements in Gaza and Israeli communities just outside the strip. Palestinians have said the stepped-up attacks are intended to show that, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pursues a plan to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza, Israel is retreating from the area under fire.
Five Israelis have been killed in Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks in the last three months. On Wednesday, at the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, two children, ages 2 and 4, were killed when a rocket slammed into an alley near their home in Sderot, a small Israeli industrial town less than two miles from the northeast corner of the Gaza Strip.
A senior Israeli official, speaking after Sharon met with his security cabinet late Thursday night, compared the situation in Gaza with the situation that existed in the West Bank following the March 2002 suicide bombing that killed 30 Israelis at a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya. That attack led to an Israeli military offensive in the West Bank called Defensive Shield.
"The situation cannot be tolerated anymore and something must be done to stop it, even if a high price has to be paid," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We intend to begin a large-scale operation in Gaza" that will continue "until we achieve the desired results," he said.
The official said the operation would make it "hard, if not impossible, for Palestinians to launch rockets at Israeli towns and villages, and particularly at the city of Sderot."
He also said, "I hope this can be achieved in a short time, a few days," by clearing areas of cover and pushing Palestinian guerrillas away from the border. The longest range recorded for one of the Palestinians' homemade Qassam rockets, according to Israeli military officials, is just over six miles.
The official laid blame on the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, saying the organization wanted to create circumstances that would prevent Israel from withdrawing from Gaza "to give justification for their struggle, and if this situation continues, we might not be able to implement the plan. We will not be able to withdraw thousands of Israelis under fire."
Hamas, in a statement posted on its Web site, said: "The enemy understands only force and only the language of force. . . . Its wounds become deeper the more it roams in Gaza."
Israeli forces entered northern Gaza on Tuesday night. They occupied positions on major roads and in the fields outside several towns frequently used as cover for firing rockets over the heavily fortified border at Israeli communities.
Palestinian militants and civilians took to the streets to combat the Israeli incursion, witnesses said, sparking intense firefights. Despite the heavy presence of Israeli troops, several Palestinians successfully fired their projectiles, including the rocket that killed the two children in Sderot.
Thursday's fighting commenced at about 3:30 a.m., when two Palestinians from Hamas threw grenades and opened fire at soldiers manning an observation post overlooking Qassam launch sites in northern Gaza. The attackers killed one soldier, according to an army spokeswoman. Both attackers were killed in a subsequent exchange of fire, she said.
Later in the morning, two Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli woman who was jogging in a protected area between the Jewish settlements of Elei Sinai and Dugit in the northwest corner of the Gaza Strip, the army spokeswoman said. When Israeli troops came to the woman's aid, the spokeswoman said, an army paramedic was also shot and killed.
Israeli troops returned fire, killing one of the gunmen. The other led troops on a chase that lasted for several hours, ending when they shot him and he exploded, indicating that he was carrying explosive devices, the army spokeswoman said.
Four other Palestinians were killed in fighting Thursday morning and afternoon, but details were murky.
Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim in the Gaza Strip contributed to this report.
-------- mideast
Rebel Violence in Turkey Could Erode Kurds' Gains
October 1, 2004
By SUSAN SACHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/europe/01kurd.html?pagewanted=all
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - The kidnappers came at dusk, just as the day shift at the Tigre marble quarry was ending. Pulling aside the two most senior men, they herded the rest of the dust-caked workers into a small dining hall at gunpoint.
The armed men wore bulky camouflage jackets, according to several people there. They spoke in flawless Kurdish and were chillingly polite.
"We have some business to take care of," one of them announced. "Your two friends will be coming with us as our guests."
Before slipping away with their hostages toward the desolate gray mountains to the east, they conveyed one last message. "Maybe you consider us terrorists," one kidnapper was said to have told the assembled workers. "But we are your brothers."
The abduction of the two foremen on Aug. 29 was the third such incident in six weeks at the remote marble quarries in the flatlands 20 miles north of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, and few people harbored any doubts as to who was responsible.
"We know it was the P.K.K.," said Raif Turk, the quarry owner, using the Kurdish-language initials of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, an outlawed rebel group. "These are people who call themselves guerrillas. But they just wanted money from us."
At the very moment that Kurds have begun to achieve a modicum of economic progress and cultural freedom, Kurdish militants have taken up arms in southeastern Turkey, reviving memories of their separatist insurgency that bankrupted the region and killed some 30,000 people in the late 1980's and the 1990's.
Turkish security forces blamed Kurdish guerrillas for two hotel bombings in Istanbul in August and the bombing of a pop concert in mid-September in the southern city of Mersin, as well as a recent spate of deadly explosions, ambushes and roadside bombs that have killed dozens of soldiers and civilians, including several children, in the southeast.
Clashes between the army and the rebels have become a weekly occurrence, badly straining relations between Turkey and its southern neighbor, Iraq. Turkish officials, already nervous over de facto Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, say the guerrillas are operating unmolested from bases in the Iraqi Kurdish zone.
Old loyalties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party run deep here, as does distrust of the government and the generals in Ankara. But people at all levels of Kurdish society have started to quietly question the guerrillas' tactics, timing and targets, and to worry that a rebel offensive could undercut recent Kurdish political gains.
"I think this is a tactical move by the organization to show that it still exists," said Mahmut Vefa, a human rights lawyer in Diyarbakir. "For one thing, there is no basis to conduct an armed struggle now. And for another, people are not willing to go through all that again."
The group's leader, Abdullah Ocalan, still maintains more than a symbolic grip on Kurdish public life, even though he has been in a Turkish prison since 1999. Political and civic leaders, with rare exceptions, hesitate to break with the one legal political party, called Dehap, that Mr. Ocalan is said to endorse.
"No movement that is not approved by Ocalan can succeed," said Mr. Vefa, who helped found Dehap in 1997. When he backed an independent candidate for mayor of a small town near Diyarbakir in municipal elections in March, he said, local newspapers branded him a traitor.
The Marxist-oriented Kurdistan Workers' Party was once the adored champion of Kurdish aspirations for recognition as a separate people with its own language and culture. Thousands of young Kurds stole away to its mountain lairs in response to its call in 1984 to take up arms against the Turkish state.
The ensuing 15-year conflict devastated the long impoverished southeast. The Turkish military razed several thousand villages suspected of sympathizing with the group. Publishing the word Kurd was enough to put writers in jail. At the same time, the rebels murdered thousands of people they deemed collaborators with the state.
When Mr. Ocalan was captured - and made a surprising renunciation of separatism - his fighters called a unilateral cease-fire. It was never acknowledged by the government, which refuses to deal with the rebels. Yet with war over and Turkey in pursuit of European Union membership, Kurds eventually began to see restrictions ease and signs of life emerge in their regional economy.
The region still lags in investment and public works, but Kurdish businessmen are now building shiny new shopping malls. A few new factories and 13 marble quarries have opened in the last four years, employing hundreds of people.
At the same time, the government has pledged to respect minority rights. State television has begun limited Kurdish-language broadcasting. And in a widely hailed gesture, a Turkish court in June released four well-known Kurdish activists, including the former Parliament member Leyla Zana, who had served 10 years in prison for contacts with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
The rebels called off their cease-fire the same month, saying the Turkish Army was hounding them and they were obliged to defend themselves. But Mr. Ocalan's deputies in the field appear confused over how to deal with the changed political environment.
Ms. Zana recently ventured an appeal for peace in the region to allow the democratic reforms to take root. A pro-Kurdish Web site posted a statement attributed to Murat Karayilan, identified as the rebel group's senior field commander.
"Don't go any further," it warned Ms. Zana, "or you will be punished."
The rebels can get away with threatening political figures because many Kurds still doubt that the reforms are sincere, said Sezgin Tanrikulu, the head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association.
"We've come a long way," he said. "But no matter how harshly we condemn, the idea of violence continues to have a hold on the minds of young people. To expel it there have to be much more courageous steps toward cultural rights and democratization." The increase in violent incidents has political dimensions. It provides ammunition for nationalists, particularly in the military, who object to the present government's easing of restrictions on the Kurds. It may also upset the ambitions of the governing Justice and Development Party, which made a strong showing in local elections in the region at the expense of Dehap, the homegrown Kurdish party.
"People are starting to say that neither the P.K.K. nor the government is doing us any good," said Kutbettin Arzu, president of the Diyarbakir Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "Now more people are realizing that those who want violence are actually profiting from the violence."
Mr. Turk, the quarry owner whose supervisors were kidnapped, said he sought help from local people who might have contact with the rebels but found they could not explain the abductions either. The two workers were released without explanation after two weeks.
"I find that everyone says they disapprove of such operations," he said. "Everyone wants to see a continuation of this peaceful environment so that even this modest economic development can continue."
Other Kurds, however, hesitate to lay blame or even question the motives of the rebels.
"You have to see things from our perspective," said Seyhmus Bayhan, the mayor of Lice, a town just past the marble quarries that was partially destroyed by the Turkish army in 1993. "We don't support violence. But those are the sons of this region who are in the mountains and people here see Ocalan as the reason they have gotten the limited rights they have today."
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani Mosque Ripped by Bomb During Packed Service
October 1, 2004
By SALMAN MASOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/asia/01CND-STAN.html?pagewanted=all
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 1 - A powerful suicide bomb ripped through a Shiite mosque in the eastern city of Sialkot today, killing at least 23 worshipers and wounding more than 60, Pakistani officials said.
Hospital workers said they had counted 27 dead and warned that the toll could rise still higher if more victims succumbed to their injuries.
The attack came as President Pervez Musharraf returned from a visit to United Nations headquarters in New York and several European countries. It also came less than a week since Pakistani law enforcement agents shot to death Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who had been sought as a top terror suspect and operative for Al Qaeda.
President Musharraf issued a statement condemning the attack and promising no compromise in his campaign to rid the country of extremism and sectarian violence. "Terrorists have no religion and are enemies of mankind," he said.
No one took responsibility for today's suicide bombing, but Pakistani officials speculated that the attack could have been linked to the Farooqi killing last Sunday in southern Pakistan.
"Maybe, after the killing of Amjad Farooqi, this is an act of retaliation," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said by telephone this evening. "But let's see. No one has claimed responsibility yet. Investigations are under way."
Mr. Farooqi was accused of masterminding the two assassination attempts on the life of General Musharraf last December and was also believed to have been involved in the murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
President Musharraf, a staunch ally of President Bush's, has vowed to root out Islamic militancy from the country and has banned several extremist groups. On his orders, the Pakistan Army has been trying to flush out Al Qaeda suspects and sympathizers in the semiautonomous northwestern tribal areas straddling the border with Afghanistan.
The Pakistani authorities, fearing a militant backlash, put the country on high alert after Mr. Farooqi's killing and they arrested at least 15 terror suspects in operations around the country.
Pakistani analysts said the terror attack today could have been planned to disrupt and destabilize the government and demonstrate the tenacity of extremists and their ability to strike back.
The suicide bombing, in the Zainabia mosque, in the Rangpura neighborhood of Sialkot, took place at 1:30 p.m., as worshipers were listening to the Friday sermon.
The police said hundreds were in the mosque at the time of the blast, which shattered windows, damaged walls and carved a two-foot-deep crater in the floor. Body parts were strewn about, according to early reports.
A bomb disposal squad also defused a 12.5-kilogram (5.68-pound) bomb found at the scene and recovered three electronic detonators, two nine-volt batteries and 60 feet of detonating cord, the police said.
Television showed images of injured worshipers, burned and scarred by shrapnel, being ferried to hospitals in ambulances and private vehicles.
The eastern industrial city of Sialkot, in Punjab Province, some 105 miles southeast of here, is famous for its exporting of sporting goods, leather garments and surgical and musical instruments. Residents describe it as a tolerant city where Muslims of both Sunni and Shiite sects live in harmony.
"The Friday bomb blast comes as a shock to the residents," Khawaja Muhammad Asif, a member of the Parliament from Sialkot, said. "This is the first incident of its kind here."
After the blast, protesters clashed with police officers across the city, setting one police van on fire and refusing to let police officials enter the mosque after the explosion, according to reports from Sialkot. Army troops were eventually called out to help quell the disturbances.
More than 50 people were killed in suicide attacks on Shiite mosques in the southern port city of Karachi during May alone, and tensions among Shiites have been running high.
Shiites make up about 20 percent of Pakistan's population, with Sunnis constituting 77 percent. Although they are in the minority, Shiites in Pakistan are concentrated in urban areas and have a disproportionately large presence in government.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia's military on verge of collapse: defense minister
MOSCOW (AFP)
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041001143518.h7q413va.html
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warned Friday that the Russian armed forces were on the verge of collapse because people were avoiding the draft and less than 10 percent of those eligible were showing up at enlistment stations.
Ivanov said in televised remarks that 176,000 soldiers would be enlisted in the October-December draft season -- less than one in every 10 of the people eligible for the draft.
"By comparison I can say that just 10 years ago, in 1994, we called up 30 percent of all of those eligible. Now it is less than 10 percent.
"This really is a critical line and we cannot go any lower, otherwise we will simply lose our armed forces," Ivanov said at a military base in the central Russian town of Oryol.
Russian men must serve for at least two years in the armed forces some time between the ages of 18 and 27, depending on whether they go to university.
But an embedded fear of service in a cash-strapped military, where morale is low and cases of brutal and often deadly hazing are on the rise, have spun a web of ways out of the draft -- from false medical certificates to direct bribes.
"We are the champions of the world when it comes to duty deferments," Ivanov quipped.
One reason Russians fear the draft is Chechnya, where war has been waged nearly without interruption for the past decade, with the last campaign launched five years ago Friday.
A band of several thousand guerrillas has been standing up against a Russian contingent of up to 80,000 soldiers, with the war now a deadly stalemate with casualties -- including those civilians -- reported on an almost daily basis.
Soldiers' rights committees have complained that Russian teenagers with only a few months training were being thrown into one of the deadliest war zones on earth.
Ivanov said Friday that none of the people called up this fall season would be posted in Chechnya, ITAR-TASS reported.
Russia had earlier aired plans to have its Chechnya force made up entirely of professional soldiers starting January 1. President Vladimir Putin had put Ivanov -- the country's first civilian defense minister and the Russian leader's close political ally -- in charge of army reforms in 2001, but his efforts have so far seem to have produced few concrete results.
Russia plans to boost its defense budget by nearly one third next year, in part due to a wave of terror attacks linked to Chechen militants that killed hundreds in Russia this year.
-------- spies
Goss Brings 4 Staffers From Hill to CIA
New Director Quickly Makes His Mark on Agency With Personnel Decision
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63481-2004Sep30.html
In his sixth day on the job, CIA Director Porter J. Goss began making changes in the embattled agency's leadership, installing in top-level positions four staff members from the House intelligence committee, which he led for six years.
The moves sent a tremor through CIA headquarters at Langley, where officers already nervous about proposals to reorganize U.S. intelligence worried that Goss was acting too hastily. Some also expressed concern that newcomers from the Republican-run House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence would bring partisan sensibilities to their new roles.
Concerns about partisanship and the CIA have been at the forefront of public debate over the agency's future in the past weeks. During Goss's Senate confirmation hearings, Democrats repeatedly pressed him for guarantees, which he gave, that he would leave behind his history of partisan battling when he left Congress to take over the CIA. More recently, some Republican members of Congress and others have accused the CIA of writing and disclosing pessimistic assessments on Iraq to undermine President Bush in the midst of the campaign.
"My hope is they don't come in and do a wholesale change that would do damage to a strategic effort that has produced excellent work on terrorism and a variety of other important issues," said James L. Pavitt, who recently retired as the agency's deputy director of operations. "Does it make a lot of sense to set the place on its head at a time when the nation is under a multitude of threats? They need to listen and learn first."
Yesterday, Goss named as his executive director -- the third-ranking spot at the agency -- Michael V. Kostiw, who most recently has served as staff director of the House committee's terrorism subcommittee. Before that he was a lobbyist for ChevronTexaco Corp. and was at CIA for 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s.
At yesterday's morning staff meeting, the current executive director, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, announced he was leaving after 6 1/2 years at the agency. Krongard, a former investment banker, was brought in by former CIA director George J. Tenet to improve management at the agency. Goss, in a statement released yesterday, described Krongard as having brought "energy, dedication and a wealth of new ideas to the agency" and said his efforts "will be remembered."
Goss also named Patrick Murray, the House committee's staff director, to be his chief of staff and Jay Jakub and Merrell Moorhead, two other committee staffers, as special assistants. Moorhead is to deal with strategic planning and Jakub with operations and analysis, according to a senior administration official.
Jakub, who worked as an analyst at the agency before he joined the committee, was staff director of the panel's subcommittee on human intelligence and one of the authors of a highly critical report on the CIA's human intelligence operations.
In the last several years, the House intelligence committee has developed a reputation among some members of Congress and national security agencies for ineffectiveness -- a source of concern yesterday at CIA headquarters. The panel was unable to produce a promised report on prewar intelligence on Iraq and often focused on issues that seemed tangential to the main problems facing the intelligence community, officials complained. In contrast to its counterpart committee in the Senate, the House panel conducted few oversight investigations and held few open hearings. Some committee staff members also had rough working relations with the CIA's leadership and its Directorate of Operations, a small but powerful group within the CIA.
"It's going to cause serious angst at the agency because of the poor relations they have had with the CIA," said Howard Hart, former senior clandestine services officer. "These people will have no credibility in the agency because of their past performance on the House intelligence committee staff."
Another former intelligence officer said: "It looks as though he is installing people known to be partisan politicos and that may have a stifling effect on the staff. When you parachute in with a whole raft of people right away, it doesn't bode well."
"There is great concern about the migration of Hill staffers to the agency because it creates a clash of cultures," another former senior CIA official said yesterday, describing his conversations with agency personnel over the past few days. "Hill people have a loyalty to an individual, not to the institution," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is still in government and is not authorized to speak publicly.
The former official added that during Goss's first week in office the new director has given some the impression that "there is an inner circle" because he has not regularly attended the 8:30 a.m. staff meeting, but has held a meeting with his own staffers.
An administration official familiar with the transition, however, stressed that Goss had just begun.
"It is unfair to draw such conclusions at this time," the official said. Goss, he said, was not at the agency for two days this week, having flown Monday to Florida, where he visited his home after Hurricane Jeanne, and returning Tuesday evening.
There have been similar concerns and anxieties at CIA headquarters when previous directors of central intelligence from outside the agency took over. In 1995, when John M. Deutch became director, he brought in several former Democratic Hill staff members, including Tenet from the Senate committee, who would rise to become director, retiring last August after seven years in that post.
--------
White House-CIA breach
October 01, 2004
Washington Times
By John B. Roberts II
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040930-082915-5728r.htm
When the president cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak's revelations this week that CIA officer Paul R. Pillar is actively undermining President Bush fail to portray the depth of animosity between factions within the CIA and the White House.
Mr. Pillar, who currently serves on the CIA's National Intelligence Council (NIC) as National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for the Near East and South Asia, is the lead author of the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's future recently leaked to the New York Times. The NIE is a gloomy assessment of the prospects for Iraq's stability. The timing of the leak just before Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Washington visit and Mr. Bush's U.N. General Assembly speech was intended to undermine both leaders.
The purpose of the NIC is to support the director of central intelligence in his mission of providing guidance to the president. It is often described as the CIA's inhouse think tank. In carrying out their duties, NIOs like Mr. Pillar have regular contact with experts and academics outside government. According to Mr. Novak, Mr. Pillar has used these sessions to disclose the contents of the CIA's prewar advice to Mr. Bush. This is an egregious breach of confidence.
The full dossier on Mr. Pillar raises disturbing questions regarding the National Intelligence Council's decision to rely on him as principal author of the NIE on Iraq. Mr. Pillar is a longstanding intellectual opponent of the policy options chosen by President Bush to fight terrorism.
In an assessment Mr. Pillar published this summer titled "Counterterrorism After Al Qaeda," he asserts that "the U.S. government undertook the military operation in Iraq primarily for reasons other than counterterrorism." Mr. Pillar's thrust is that effective counterterrorism operations against Ossama bin Laden combined with the Moslem reaction to the Iraq war have created "decentralized" terrorist cells. These cells, Mr. Pillar believes, will be even harder than al Qaeda for the CIA to defeat without "initiatives to address the reasons individuals gravitate toward terrorism in the first place." The paper can be read on the National Intelligence Council's website.
In March 2001, when Mr. Pillar was Deputy Chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, he published a book called "Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy" outlining his prescription for counterterrorism. The book is undeservedly self-congratulatory, especially when Mr. Pillar boasts about the role of intelligence in reducing U.S. terrorist casualties by half only months before his office failed to prevent the worst terrorist attack against Americans ever. To his credit, Mr. Pillar says the best option for handling al-Qaeda is to "eliminate the group." But in every other significant respect, the book counsels the opposite of Mr. Bush's policy choices.
Mr. Pillar criticizes as "simplistic" those who "think of terrorism simply as an evil to be eradicated." He writes that "overheated rhetoric" about weapons of mass destruction results in "a tendency to treat the whole subject of terrorism in terms of body counts and to focus not just mainly but exclusively on the number of people (and more specifically the number of Americans) whom terrorism kills or might kill ." Mr. Pillar warns that this leads to "a tendency toward absolute solutions and a rejection of accommodation and finesse."
"If counterterrorism is conceived of as a war," Mr. Pillar writes, "it is a small step to conclude that in this war there is no substitute for victory and thus no room for compromise."
Mr. Pillar's prescription for counterterrorism is "more finesse and, if not less fight, then fighting in a carefully calculated and selective way."
September 11 was the CIA's most spectacular failure. It happened on Mr. Pillar's watch. Afterward, he was reassigned to the National Intelligence Council. (At times since September 11, Mr. Pillar has served on assignment to the Counterterrorism Center.) At the CIA, a transfer from an operational unit to an analyst's desk is a de facto demotion.
After September 11, Mr. Pillar must have seethed as one by one President Bush rejected his counterterrorism prescriptions. His managers surely knew when they assigned him to write the NIE on Iraq that such an intellectual adversary of Mr. Bush could not objectively analyze Mr. Bush's policies and their consequences. They must have understood that Mr. Pillar would use his contact with academics outside government to criticize Mr. Bush's decisions.
Senior officials within the CIA are subverting Mr. Bush politically. In conversations I have had with senior CIA officials over the past two years, the tone has grown increasingly acerbic. I was in Switzerland and spoke with a veteran CIA officer when the furor over Valerie Plame's blown cover broke. The officer, a longtime Republican, denounced the White House for a "vindictive" leak. Long before Anonymous published "Imperial Hubris," CIA officials I spoke with called the White House "arrogant" and "hubristic."
This breach between the White House and CIA is dangerous. When there is mistrust between an intelligence agency and the political leadership, the peril is immense. Botched Israeli counterterrorist operations against Black September undermined Prime Minister Golda Meir's faith in the Mossad to such an extent that she disregarded the agency's warning of the impending 1973 Yom Kippur attack.
No matter how well the post-September 11 CIA performs its mission of protecting the country, if the White House cannot trust the agency, national security suffers. Porter Goss' first challenge as CIA director is to restore confidence between the agency and the president. If he fails, it will further undermine the CIA's already-tenuous support among policymakers. That could spell the end of the CIA as we know it.
John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House. He writes frequently on terrorism and national security affairs.
-------- us
Military Voter Education Underway
Pentagon Seeks to Ensure Problems That Plagued 2000 Election Do Not Recur
By Jo Becker and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63198-2004Sep30?language=printer
Inside the magnificent atrium of Al Faw Palace, a retreat for Iraqi military officers under Saddam Hussein, hangs a poster aimed at the U.S. soldiers who now occupy the building. "It's your future -- VOTE for it," it urges. At a forward operating base on the other side of Baghdad, a "voting assistance officer" appears on a big-screen television and reminds hundreds of soldiers to cast their ballots in time for November's presidential election.
First Lt. Phan Ton, who is helping coordinate the military's voter education effort, said interest among the troops is high: "I think with soldiers being out here, they think they should have a say in something that could affect them in the future."
But whether the men and women serving their country overseas will get their say is far from sure.
The Defense Department has embarked on what it says is the most aggressive voter education campaign in military history, hoping to solve problems that caused thousands of military absentee ballots to be nullified in the 2000 election. But the effort has been marred by missteps.
An Internet voting plan was canceled, and a high-tech voting system the Pentagon is trying for the first time has been criticized by computer experts who say it could be tampered with and by voting-rights advocates who say it requires soldiers and Marines to forgo their right to vote in secret. Critics, including members of the Election Assistance Commission, which was established after the 2000 presidential recount to help the nation develop new voting procedures, worry that service members may again be disenfranchised.
"Has it improved? Yes," said Derek Stewart, director of military personnel issues at the Government Accountability Office, which has written several reports critical of the Pentagon's efforts. "Is it perfect? No. On November 2nd, is it going to work the way it's supposed to? That's anyone's guess," he said.
The military does not keep voter registration figures, but voting assistance officers in Iraq said they have noticed a sharp increase in the number of service members who want to vote -- the first time since the Vietnam War that a presidential election has been held when there is such a large troop deployment.
While Republicans have traditionally enjoyed a solid advantage among service members and their families, some analysts believe that long combat deployments and economic hardships endured by reservists and National Guard members could allow Democrats to cut into that support. President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry are both courting military voters, and a shift could prove important in battleground states with large military populations.
The problem may be that service members either will not be able to vote or that their ballots will not be counted in time. The military's history of difficulties in getting paper ballots to other countries was highlighted during the 2000 election debacle in Florida. Ballots arrived in supervisors' offices postmarked after Election Day, not postmarked at all or lacking a required witness signature. The military vote broke in Bush's favor, and a fierce battle ensued as to whether those ballots should be counted.
Problems were not limited to Florida; by the Pentagon's estimates, up to 29 percent of military personnel who wanted to vote but did not either did not get an absentee ballot or received it too late. A 2001 GAO report found that overseas ballots sent by military personnel and civilians were four times more likely to be disqualified than domestic absentee ballots.
Since then, the Defense Department has announced several initiatives, including efforts to ensure that mailed ballots are given priority handling. The Pentagon has worked with state elections officials so that many states will try to mail absentee ballots at least 45 days before an election to ensure service members receive them in time to vote, though some have missed their deadlines because of legal disputes over whether to include Ralph Nader and a variety of initiatives on ballots. Most states will also fax blank ballots to service members, and some allow ballots to be downloaded from the Internet.
Defense officials have tried to make sure ballots are returned quickly to service members' hometowns. Twenty-three states will accept the voted ballots by fax, and Missouri and North Dakota announced they will accept ballots via a new Defense Department e-mail system. "We're confident that we're providing all the information and the capability that our service members, as well as U.S. citizens living overseas, need to obtain and return absentee ballots in a timely manner," said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Defense Department spokeswoman.
But skeptics such as Samuel F. Wright, director of the Military Voting Rights Project for the National Defense Committee, point to problems that have plagued a Pentagon effort he said remains "disorganized."
"I'm concerned there will still be a lot of people disenfranchised," he said.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon was forced to cancel a $22 million Internet voting project after security experts said the system was so insecure that it could jeopardize the integrity of the election.
A GAO report released this past spring found continuing problems with the military postal system when it came to combat zone delivery. In May, the Pentagon's inspector general found in surprise visits to 10 foreign bases that the Defense Department's overseas voter awareness program was often ineffective and given low priority.
Some service members in Iraq say that, despite the program, they remain confused about voting requirements that differ from state to state. The 2004-2005 voting assistance guide for overseas citizens -- the bible for all voting assistance officers in Iraq -- is 369 pages and ends with Appendix F.
The Defense Department is charged with assisting not only 2.7 military members and their dependents with voting, but also approximately 3.4 million Americans who live overseas. Last week, the Pentagon temporarily blocked access to a Web site widely used by overseas civilians to download registration forms, citing concerns about computer hacking. It reopened the site after Democratic groups targeting those voters complained.
The Pentagon's plan to allow service members to return their ballots by fax and e-mail has raised concerns from local election officials and computer security experts. Most of the ballots will go through a private contractor, and the Pentagon will not say what measures it is taking to prevent hacking and ensure the company properly forwards each ballot to local election officials. Heightening concern is that Patricia Williams, chief executive of Omega Technologies Inc., is on the National Republican Congressional Committee's Business Advisory Council. She donated $6,600 to the committee in this election cycle.
The Defense Department said the ballots will be secure, but declined to detail security measures that "could open the system up to vulnerabilities."
Beyond security issues, election officials said the use of a contractor could present problems. Meredith Imwalle, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, said some states will accept only faxed ballots from voters. "What they haven't done is communicate with the states exactly what the plan is," she said. "There may be some states that can't accept a faxed ballot through a middleman."
Others worry because the e-mail and fax system does not keep ballots secret; anyone who sees the e-mail or fax will know how a service member voted. "We've not endorsed this notion of violating the secret ballot at all," said DeForest B. Soaries, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission.
Andrew Borene, a former Marine who served in Iraq and is a Kerry volunteer in Minnesota, said many of his service friends will be afraid to vote for Kerry under circumstances in which their ballot is not secret. "You'll have an officer looking over your shoulder, and most of them are Republican," he said. "If they perceive that their vote for Kerry will be misinterpreted as not showing support for the mission and the commander in chief, they'll be reluctant to do it."
A survey of 4,000 readers of Army Times Publishing Co. newspapers, who are active-duty, reservists or National Guard members, finds "overwhelming" support for Bush, Senior Managing Editor Robert Hodierne said. The survey, to be released Monday, found the approval for Bush's handling of the war lagging behind the service members' desire to see him reelected but much higher than that of the general electorate.
Although Hodierne said the readers surveyed, who are mainly career military, were "four-square behind the president," he noted that the results do not necessarily reflect the views of younger enlisted service members or junior officers in the National Guard and reserve.
Viewed from the ground in Iraq, the presidential campaign can seem far more nuanced and personal than it does in the United States. Sgt. David Morphew, 27, of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., registered and cast his write-in ballot during an August registration drive at Camp Victory, a sprawling U.S. base on the grounds of the Al Faw Palace near Baghdad International Airport. He declined to disclose his vote because of U.S. military regulations but made his leanings clear.
"I think we have two distinct choices right now," said Morphew, speaking near a palace swimming pool where he is a lifeguard. "One supports our soldiers and realizes how important our mission is here. The other takes a different view and thinks about how quickly we can get out," he said. "If we give in to that, it makes the sacrifice of the people who died here meaningless."
But Sgt. Marc Moyette, 29, a National Guardsman from Riverside, Calif., has a different view. "A lot of guys who don't normally vote are voting for Kerry because they see him as our biggest resolver in terms of the getting the [expletive] out of here."
Fainaru reported from Baghdad. Staff writer Jackie Spinner in Baghdad contributed to this report.
--------
Its Recruitment Goals Pressing, the Army Will Ease Some Standards
October 1, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/01recruit.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - To help meet its recruiting objectives at a time when its forces are strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's recruiting command has lowered some goals for recruits.
The changes are among the clearest signs yet of the military's growing problems in recruiting and retaining soldiers. They mean that many hundreds of prospective recruits who were likely to have been rejected last year could now be enlisted this year.
Army recruiting officials characterize the changes as modest and reasonable adjustments in goals, and well within quality standards mandated by the Pentagon and Congress. But they amount to the first relaxation in Army recruiting standards since 1998, when a strong economy hurt military recruiting.
Army officials said Thursday that for the recruiting year that started this week, at least 90 percent of new recruits should be high school graduates, compared with 92 percent last year. And up to 2 percent of recruits can be enlisted even if they scored in the lowest acceptable range on a service aptitude test, compared with 1.5 percent last year.
Given the total of 101,200 incoming soldiers whom the Army and the Army Reserve say they need this coming year, the changes mean that as many as 2,000 or so recruits who were likely to have previously been rejected could be enlisted.
"In difficult recruiting environments, it is inevitable that either quality standards or recruiting resources be subject to adjustment," said Richard I. Stark Jr., a retired Army colonel who is a military personnel specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "The Army has been forced to adjust to both."
The Army's decision to loosen standards comes amid calls for the House Armed Services Committee to investigate accusations by some Iraq war veterans that, nearing the end of their enlistments, they are being pressured to choose between re-enlisting on one hand and being sent back to Iraq with another unit on the other. Army officials have denied using any such approach to encourage re-enlistment.
In another sign of strains within the Army, more than 35 percent of nearly 3,900 former soldiers mobilized for yearlong assignments in a little-used wartime program have resisted their call-up, seeking delays or exemptions. Some of the former soldiers, members of the Individual Ready Reserve, may face criminal charges for failing to report, Army officials said.
The strains of Iraq and Afghanistan have energized a bipartisan effort in Congress to increase the size of the Army by 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, have helped to spur calls by Senator John Kerry to enlarge the Army by 40,000 and have prompted many lawmakers to warn of a tough challenge for recruiters.
"Recruiting for the United States Army is going to be a major challenge in the days ahead," Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said this week. "You are wearing them out."
Officials said Thursday that the Army met most of its goals for the 2004 recruiting year, which ended on Monday. The active-duty Army exceeded its recruiting target of 77,000 soldiers by 587, and the Army Reserve exceeded its goal of 21,200 by 78, according to Douglas Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command, at Fort Knox, Ky. But the Army National Guard missed its recruiting target of 56,000 soldiers by 5,000, the first shortfall by the Guard since 1994.
One main reason the Army has changed its quality standards is that it is entering the new 12-month recruiting cycle from one of its worst starting points in a decade.
Typically, the Army wants to enter each recruiting cycle with a cushion of incoming volunteers whose entry has been deferred from the previous year - about 35 percent of the service's overall goal for the year. But several weeks ago the Army projected that it would reach only 25 percent, and officials said Thursday that the cushion was 18 percent.
As is typical in years when it starts with so few recruits already identified, the Army is adopting a range of incentives including bonuses, educational benefits and choice base assignments to help meet recruiting and retention goals. In addition, it is bringing on 1,000 new recruiters.
At the same time, aides to two Colorado lawmakers, Representatives Diana DeGette, a Democrat, and Joel Hefley, a Republican, say their offices have received calls from several soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., as well as Fort Riley, Kan., and Fort Lewis, Wash., complaining of pressure to re-enlist with the alternative being deployment to Iraq.
One sergeant at Fort Carson, who served nearly a year in Iraq with the Fourth Infantry Division's Third Brigade and whose enlistment is to end in February 2006, said Thursday that rather than re-enlist, he would risk the chance of being reassigned to a unit bound for Iraq.
"I can understand we're in a war, and extraordinary things happen in war, but the Army is moving the goal posts on me," the sergeant said in a telephone interview, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A spokesman for Fort Carson, Lt. Col. Dave Johnson, said a new Army program to create more-stable units whose members will stay together for three years required troops whose enlistments end before December 2007 to re-enlist, extend their current enlistments a bit or take no action and possibly be assigned to another unit.
But Colonel Johnson said the Army was looking closely at each soldier's record and was not using the threat of Iraq deployment to increase re-enlistments. "We're not strong-arming anyone," he said.
-------- war crimes
U.S. Aide Faults Serbia for Not Handing Over War Crimes Suspect
October 1, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/europe/01serbia.html?pagewanted=all
BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 30 - A senior American diplomat expressed frustration on Thursday that Serbia had yet to turn over a leading war crimes suspect months after the election of a new president who had promised "full cooperation" with the international tribunal at The Hague.
Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said the Serbian government had made no progress toward arresting the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Gen. Ratko Mladic.
General Mladic was indicted in 1995 on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from his actions during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia. American diplomats believe that he is hiding in Serbia.
"Sadly, the obligations that Belgrade has to The Hague remain unmet," Mr. Grossman told reporters after meeting with Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic. "Mladic is still at large."
While European governments and the United States have repeatedly called for General Mladic's arrest, Mr. Grossman's remarks reflected the growing disappointment with Serbia among Western diplomats since the election of a reformist president in June.
The inauguration of Boris Tadic, who during his election campaign had promised "full cooperation" with the war crimes tribunal, had raised expectations of possible arrests.
"Ninety days have gone by since," Mr. Grossman said. "I hate to think that another 90 days will go by and another 90 days." Senior Western diplomats said they had hoped Mr. Tadic would call directly for General Mladic's arrest, something he has not done so far.
While criticizing the government, Mr. Grossman said he welcomed the announcement by a Serbian court on Wednesday that it had issued indictments for four police and army generals also wanted by The Hague. He repeated an earlier offer that the United States might support Serbian demands that the four be tried in Serbia, if Mr. Mladic is handed over soon.
The United States and the European Union have already imposed an array of penalties on Serbia for its failure to cooperate more closely with the tribunal.
Congress has voted to suspend $70 million of aid to Serbia, and the Serbian government is unable to seek loans from the International Monetary Fund. Serbia's applications for membership in NATO's Partnership for Peace program and the European Union also remain blocked.
The Serbian government remains deeply divided on policy toward the tribunal. Although President Tadic has expressed the need to cooperate with the court, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has said war crimes suspects should be tried in Serbia.
Some government officials warn that the arrests of men many Serbs still regard as war heroes could further strengthen the nationalistic Serbian Radical Party, the largest party in Parliament.
"It's not only sensitivities of the electorate," said Pedrag Simic, a political scientist at Belgrade University and a former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Kostunica. "It is also the question of whether we have made a new state apparatus capable of dealing with these questions." Many police and judicial officials remain unchanged since the time of the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, he said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
High court halts record secrecy
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 01, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040930-114636-4674r.htm
The Supreme Court will get rid of a little bit of its secrecy next week when it abolishes the practice of keeping justices' names out of the official record of argument sessions.
For decades, transcripts have listed "Question," without identifying the questioner.
Reporters and legal scholars have complained that the practice was unusual, especially because the sessions are open to the public.
"The notion of an oral argument, keeping it secret, that's just silly," said American University constitutional scholar Herman Schwartz. "You're talking about an institution that tries to shroud itself in mystery and stay out of the limelight as much as possible."
The court announced this week that names will be included now "in the interest of the accuracy and completeness of the transcripts for reporting, research and archival purposes."
It is the latest in a series of steps to bring the court into the computer age, including putting the transcripts on the court's Web site, http://www.supremecourtus.gov.
Cameras and tape recorders are banned in the courtroom. But in 2000, the court immediately released a court-made tape recording of the Bush v. Gore argument over the contested presidential election results in Florida.
Since then, the court has released audio of other high-profile cases, such as the recent terrorism appeals that tested the Bush administration's wartime powers.
The camera ban is not expected to change anytime soon. Sketch artists provide the only glimpse of the black-robed justices.
The Supreme Court first began regularly providing transcripts of oral arguments in 1968, and adopted the practice of excluding names of the justices. Transcripts of arguments dating to 1935 were sometimes done by private shorthand reporters, who would include justices' names, the court said.
Meanwhile, justices once again are considering a case involving the Pledge of Allegiance.
Justices were asked this year whether the Pledge and its reference to God belong in public schools. The court got rid of the red-hot case without ruling on the issue.
Now, a Colorado man wants the court to decide whether the oath belongs in courthouses.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
9/11 Panelists Oppose House Provisions
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63329-2004Sep30.html
Members of the Sept. 11 commission called on House leaders yesterday to drop controversial proposals regarding immigration and law enforcement power, saying they could sink Congress's efforts to revamp the nation's intelligence operations this fall.
In the strongest signal yet that they prefer the Senate's approach to key recommendations from the report they issued in July, the commissioners also insisted that a proposed national intelligence director have clear budgetary and administrative control of Defense Department intelligence-gathering agencies. The House bill, scheduled for floor debate next week, leaves much of that power with the defense secretary.
Six of the commission's 10 members, including the chairman and vice chairman, spoke to reporters in the Capitol before meeting privately with lawmakers. The three Republicans and three Democrats urged congressional leaders to begin narrowing differences in the two chambers' proposals in order to send a bill to the president before adjournment this fall.
"The Senate bill is a giant step forward" and "the right vehicle for our recommendations" regarding the executive branch, said former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R), the commission's chairman. He and his colleagues gave much fainter praise to the House bill, which includes dozens of provisions to boost federal powers to track or deport immigrants suspected of terrorist ties.
"The House bill contains a number of proposals that go significantly beyond the commission's recommendations," said former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), the commission's vice chairman. "We respectfully submit that consideration of controversial provisions at this late hour can harm our shared purpose in getting a good bill to the president before the 108th Congress adjourns."
It was unclear how receptive to compromise House leaders might be. Immediately after the news conference, John Feehery, spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), told reporters, "The stuff that will drag the bill down, we won't do." But later, after commissioners had met with Hastert's chief of staff, Feehery declined to say which provisions, if any, might be removed from the House's 335-page bill.
"Controversy is in the eye of the beholder," he said. "We're going to do the right thing" and produce a bill the president can sign.
Hamilton said items that should be dropped include "alien-removal provisions." The House bill contains several measures that would make it easier for the government to deport undocumented immigrants who have fallen under suspicion for various reasons. They include a broader application of "expedited removal" rules, higher barriers to obtaining asylum, and relaxed standards for sending foreigners to countries where they might be tortured. Civil liberties groups and some lawmakers have said the provisions could erode important constitutional protections.
Kean, meanwhile, spoke sharply against House provisions -- and proposed Senate amendments -- that would limit the national intelligence director's authority over spending and personnel decisions in agencies including the National Reconnaissance Office and National Security Agency. The House bill would keep more of that power in the Pentagon.
"This is not an area where one can compromise," Kean said. "If you're not going to create a strong national intelligence director, with powers both appointive and over the budget, don't do it."
Senators next week will continue debating amendments to the Senate bill sponsored by Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). A source close to the Sept. 11 commission, who asked not to be named because of delicate negotiations with lawmakers, predicted that the House will keep most of its bill's provisions intact throughout next week's floor debate and votes.
The commissioners' hope, the source said, is that House leaders will drop some of the most contentious provisions in the eventual House-Senate conference that will have to resolve all differences between the bills.
--------
9/11 Commissioners Say Bill's Added Provisions Are Harmful
October 1, 2004
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/01panel.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Members of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks called on the House Republican leadership on Thursday to jettison some provisions tacked onto an emerging measure to reorganize United States intelligence agencies, saying such add-ons threatened enactment of the legislation.
"We respectfully submit that consideration of controversial provisions at this late hour can harm our shared purpose of getting a good bill to the president before the 108th Congress adjourns," former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, the vice chairman of the panel, told reporters.
The commissioners were backed in their call by relatives of those killed in the terror attacks, a number of House Democrats and a few Republicans who said they were worried that what they considered extraneous proposals on law enforcement and immigration, among others, could short-circuit the legislation.
"I have concerns that some on my side of the aisle want there to be some poison pills," said Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, who is pushing instead for a vote on his measure that converts the recommendations of the Sept. 11 panel into law.
The commissioners, who later met with a top aide to Representative J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, urged the House leadership to allow a vote on that plan and made clear their preference for the more bipartisan measure being advanced in the Senate.
"This Senate bill is a giant step forward," said former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, the chairman of the panel, who warned that commissioners believed there was a narrow window for achieving the overhaul. "The time for action is now."
Under the proposals being developed in Congress, a new director of national intelligence would be created within the executive branch and given substantial authority over the diverse agencies that now collect foreign and domestic intelligence. The idea is to create a central repository for the sort of fragmented information that existed before the Sept. 11 attacks. The legislation contains scores of other provisions regarding national security.
The commission members acted after a series of House committees on Wednesday blocked or defeated efforts to advance the measure offered by Mr. Shays and Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, and moved ahead with their own versions of the bill.
House Republican officials said they saw the additional provisions on border security and immigration as perfecting and expanding on the recommendations of the panel.
"There is more to protecting our country than creating a new bureaucracy," said Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader.
John Feehery, a spokesman for the speaker, said: "All of the things in our bill are directly linked to the recommendations. We are going to get things in our bill that protect the nation and reflect the commission."
The back-and-forth over the legislation came as the Senate moved slowly through its plan. Given a list of potential amendments numbering in the hundreds, Senate leaders were planning to file a motion to cut off debate and force a final vote next Tuesday. The House expects to vote on its version next week as well, and Republican leaders were pushing for a final bill reconciling the two to be completed before the election.
Commission leaders did not specify all of the House provisions that that they considered problematic, though they singled out a proposal to allow suspected terrorists to be deported to nations where they could be tortured as well as proposed regulations on Social Security registration.
In addition to the law enforcement and immigration initiatives, the commissioners and their allies are wary of the power the House bill would give the new intelligence director. The version approved by the House Armed Services Committee does not go as far as the commission recommended in transferring authority for intelligence operations from the Pentagon to the new office.
-------- justice
U.S. to appeal ruling on secret subpoenas
October 01, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040930-114633-2164r.htm
Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday that the government would appeal a New York court ruling declaring unconstitutional its power to issue secret subpoenas of Internet and telephone companies.
Speaking to reporters in the Netherlands, where he is meeting with European officials, Mr. Ashcroft said the power to issue national security letters - as the secret subpoenas are known - was "completely consistent with the United States Constitution."
Also yesterday, Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, accused the American Civil Liberties Union and the news media of misrepresenting the ruling as a blow to the Patriot Act.
"The power to issue these [subpoenas] goes back to 1986," he said. "It has nothing to do with the Patriot Act. This is another attempt by the ACLU and those who seek partisan gain from civil liberties issues to scare the American people."
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled that the power to issue the letters, which require electronic communications providers to hand over their customer records and bar them from ever disclosing that the search took place, violated the First and Fourth Amendments.
The letters can be used to find the senders of anonymous e-mail messages, or the hosts of chat rooms, for example, and are issued without judicial oversight. The bar on disclosing these secret subpoenas is so broad that it could even apply to discussions with a lawyer.
The power to issue the letters dates back to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, written by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat. Under that law, national security letters could be used only against those suspected of being agents of a foreign power.
The Patriot Act expanded the power in 2001 so that it could be used to obtain any information deemed relevant to counterintelligence or terrorism investigations.
But the expansion of the potential targets of the letters in the Patriot Act "has nothing to do with the procedural issues on which the court ruled," said Cornyn spokesman Don Stewart.
Mr. Cornyn himself, saying "Anyone can make a mistake," noted the way news media organizations had picked up on the ACLU press release claiming the ruling struck down a Patriot Act provision.
"It's amazing to me how newspapers like the New York Times can just uncritically report these kind of scare tactics," he said.
The ACLU attorney who litigated the case on behalf of an Internet service provider acknowledged that the two issues on which the court ruled - the ban on disclosure and the absence of judicial oversight - predated the Patriot Act.
"The provisions that we challenged and that the court objected to were in the statute before the Patriot Act was passed," ACLU counsel Jameel Jaffer said.
-------- prisons / prisoners
British Guantanamo Detainee Alleges Abuse from Jail
October 1, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-rights-britain-guantanamo.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON (Reuters) - A British detainee at Guantanamo Bay said in a letter revealed Friday he was tortured and abused during detention, in what is believed to be the first such claim to come from inside the prison.
The accusations from Moazzam Begg, detained in Pakistan more than two years ago, add to series of abuse claims about the U.S. prison in Cuba, particularly from former British detainees.
``It's exactly what we thought from the testimony of others who have come back from Guantanamo Bay -- exactly what we thought was happening,'' Begg's lawyer Gareth Peirce said.
Peirce said the letter was given to her earlier this week by Begg's American lawyer who had been to Guantanamo to see him. Although it came past the usual U.S. military censors, it was the first unclassified communication from him, she said.
In the letter dated July 12 of this year, Begg protested his innocence of any crime and demanded to know the reason for his detention in Bagram, Afghanistan for a year.
He said he was denied natural light and fresh food, had been held in solitary confinement, and was forced to sign and initial documents presented to him by U.S. officials.
He also said he was physically abused, stripped and paraded in front of cameras held by U.S. personnel.
``During several interviews, particularly though unexclusively in Afghanistan, I was subjected to pernicious threats of torture, actual vindictive torture and death threats, among other coercively employed interrogation techniques,'' he said in an extract of the letter read by BBC radio.
``Neither was the presence of legal counsel ever produced or made available.''
Begg also said he had partially witnessed the deaths of two detainees at the hands of U.S. military personnel.
Peirce said this helped to explain why Begg had not been seen by any other detainees at the prison. ``It suggests that he's been a witness to at least one murder which undoubtedly was in Bagram Air Base and would explain why he is now subjected to the extraordinary isolation that he is,'' she said.
The U.S. military, whose interrogation techniques have come under fire amid revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad, has denied the allegations.
More than 600 people have been held at Guantanamo without charge or access to lawyers, some for more than two years.
Britain's Foreign Office said in response to Begg's letter that its officials had visited Guantanamo Bay to check on the British detainees' welfare.
``Mr. Begg has never alleged to us that he has been systematically abused at Guantanamo in the way that has been suggested,'' a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. ``He has said that he was mistreated at Bagram and that's something that we have raised with the American authorities, who are investigating.''
Washington says the four remaining British detainees at Guantanamo pose a security threat.
Five other Britons were released in March and freed within a day by British police without any charges.
--------
DETAINEES
Deportation Delayed for 'Enemy Combatant'
October 1, 2004
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/01hamdi.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - The Bush administration on Thursday postponed deporting Yaser E. Hamdi, the Saudi-American captured in Afghanistan in 2001, because of Saudi government objections to requirements that it monitor him for five years, even though he has not been charged with a crime.
Saudi officials, clearly irritated, said they found the monitoring provision of Mr. Hamdi's release agreement unreasonable. They also noted that the supervision duties, which entail ensuring that Mr. Hamdi does not leave the country for five years, were imposed upon Saudi Arabia even though no Saudi officials were involved in the negotiations.
"I don't know why we should have to baby-sit him," said a senior Saudi official, who asked to remain unnamed because of the diplomatic implications of the issue.
A State Department official called the disagreement minor and said the administration believed it could be resolved in the next few days. The government had promised to release Mr. Hamdi no later than Thursday.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, said, "We're working, and I think we'll eventually work our way through it."
Later, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said, "There was not a deal that has come undone." But he noted that the release had been negotiated between the United States government and Mr. Hamdi's lawyers and "does not involve the Saudi authorities."
He added, "We are discussing the transfer of Mr. Hamdi to Saudi Arabia, but we're not renegotiating the agreement the Justice Department has with his lawyers."
A senior State Department official said the United States was not asking Saudi Arabia to enforce the deal.
American forces captured Mr. Hamdi during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. He was classified as an "enemy combatant'' and taken to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr. Hamdi was born in Louisiana, and when it was determined that he was an American citizen he was moved to a naval brig in Norfolk, Va. But his classification did not change, and as an enemy combatant he was not allowed to see a lawyer. No charges were ever filed against him.
But in a declaration published in July 2002, Michael Mobbs, a senior Defense Department official, asserted that Mr. Hamdi "affiliated with a Taliban military unit and received weapons training" and remained with the unit even after the United States attacked Afghanistan.
Last June, the Supreme Court, in a rebuke of Bush administration policy, ruled that Mr. Hamdi could not be held incommunicado and that he could challenge his detention before a judge. Soon afterward, rather than give him a day in court, the government began negotiating his release.
Mr. Hamdi's lawyer, Frank W. Dunham Jr., said that while the military had not given him an official update, he expected that Mr. Hamdi would not leave before Sunday.
Mr. Hamdi, who has been kept in solitary confinement for nearly three years, was allowed to call his father for the first time this week, and he called Mr. Dunham for the first time on Thursday, the lawyer said.
"His mood was very upbeat, and he knows the Saudi position is not hostile to him," Mr. Dunham said. "He knows it's delaying him, but he also knows they're concerned about his situation and that they want what's best."
Under the agreement, Mr. Hamdi will be deported to Saudi Arabia, where his father lives, and will renounce his American citizenship. He will not be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia for five years and must advise the United States embassy 30 days before any foreign travel.
He agreed never to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
The Saudi government objects to having to enforce these and other provisions, even though no charges have been filed against Mr. Hamdi.
"Mr. Hamdi has been in U.S. custody for three years, and if they had charges against him, then they would have charged him in the U.S.," said Nail al-Jubeir, spokesman for the Saudi embassy. "We have not seen any evidence that he violated the law."
Eric Lichtblau contributed reportingfor this article.
-------- terrorism
Tape Linked to bin Laden Deputy Urges Attacks on U.S.
October 1, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/middleeast/01CND-TAPE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - A new audiotaped message by Al Qaeda's second-ranking leader that was broadcast today calls on young Muslims around the world to "carry on the fight" even if the group's leaders are killed or captured.
The message by the leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was broadcast on Al Jazeera television, and intelligence officials in Washington said that a review by the Central Intelligence Agency had concluded that it was authentic. United States government officials said there was no indication that any senior Qaeda leader had died.
The new message from Mr. Zawahiri was his second in less than a month, and was the latest in a continuing flow of exhortations from fugitive Qaeda leaders. Mr. Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, the top Qaeda leader, are among those who have evaded American capture for the more than three years since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The broadcast of the audiotape came only hours after President Bush, in his debate Thursday night with Senator John Kerry, had emphasized American successes in what he described as the capture of 75 percent of "known Al Qaeda leaders," a reference to those known to American authorities at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Zawahiri spoke in Arabic on the tape, but an English-language translation of the message by CNN was posted on CNN.com. The message called on young Muslims to resist what Mr. Zawahiri described as the "Crusader campaign," a reference to the United States and its allies. The message included references to the countries that have contributed troops to the American-led forces in Iraq.
"We shouldn't wait for the American, English, French, Jewish, Hungarian, Polish and South Korean forces to invade Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria and then start the resistance after the occupier had already invaded us," Mr. Zawahiri said in the message. "We should start now."
"The interests of America, Britain, Australia, France, Norway, Poland, South Korea and Japan are everywhere. All of them participated in the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya."
Mr. Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician, was last heard in a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite channel based in Qatar, on September 9, when he forecast an American defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan. That broadcast included references to recent events, but the tape broadcast today gave no clear clue as to when it might have been made.
Mr. Zawahiri did describe the conflict between Palestinians and Israel as the focus of Muslim resistance. He referred to the killings this spring of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, leaders of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, who were killed in targeted raids by Israeli forces.
-------- torture
White House backs torture-abroad law
Bypasses U.S. interrogation restraints
`Rendition' bill angers Canadian Arar
Toronto Star
MICHELLE SHEPHARD
Oct. 1, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1096582209989&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724&tacodalogin=no
The White House has endorsed a proposed bill that would make it legal for U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use torture to extract ins general election, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson told lawmakers: "The government will work to bring about a meeting of G20 leaders to address common and pressing concerns."
The concerns to be tackled by the G20 include improving public health care in developing countries, combatting terrorism and reforming multilateral institutions.
The G20 groups together the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada), the European Union, Russia, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Aarabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.
Clarkson emphasized Canada's role in international peacekeeping and aid missions, especially "in such places like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Haiti" as she laid out the government's agenda for 2005.
"That is why the government will be increasing our regular forces by some 5,000 troops and our reserves by 3,000, so that they may be better prepared and equipped to meet these challenges," Clarkson said.
She repeated a government's pledge, made earlier this year, to establish a Canada Corps, a volunteer group modelled largely on the US Peace Corps.
The government of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin also pledged to increase spending on the development of cleaner energy sources and improving the environment, using over three billion Canadian dollars (2.4 billion US) it has received from selling off its stake in Petro-Canada.
Despite some observers' doubts that the government can meet the goals set out for it in the Kyoto Accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Clarkson said: "The government reiterates that it will respect its commitment to the Kyoto Accord."
The speech will be the subject of a lengthy debate in Parliament, beginning Wednesday.
For the first time in 25 years, the Canadian government has a minority of votes in the House of Commons.
But most analysts agree that the three opposition parties -- the right-wing Conservative Party, the regional Bloc Quebecois, and the leftist New Democratic Party -- will not try to bring the government down so soon after June's general election.
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
Ethics Panel Rebukes DeLay
Majority Leader Offered Favor To Get Peer's Vote
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63387-2004Sep30.html
The House ethics committee admonished Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) last night for offering a political favor to a Michigan lawmaker in exchange for the member's vote on last year's hard-fought Medicare prescription drug bill.
After a six-month investigation, the committee concluded that DeLay had told Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) he would endorse the congressional bid of Smith's son if the congressman gave GOP leaders a much-needed vote in a contentious pre-dawn roll call on Nov. 22.
"This conduct could support a finding that . . . DeLay violated House rules," the committee said in its 62-page report. ". . . It is improper for a member to offer or link support for the personal interests of another member as part of a quid pro quo to achieve a legislative goal."
The committee said the report "will serve as a public admonishment" of DeLay, Smith and one other GOP lawmaker involved in the negotiations that occurred on the House floor as Republican leaders scrambled for support on a much-debated bill to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare. They eventually extended the roll call for nearly three hours to avoid an embarrassing loss.
The ethics panel, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, said it would take no further action in the case.
It's rare for a high-ranking congressional leader to draw the admonition of the ethics committee. In January 1997, the ethics committee voted 7 to 1 to recommend that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) be reprimanded and pay a $300,000 penalty for disregarding House rules in misusing tax-exempt funds to promote his conservative political agenda.
DeLay has been the subject of several ethics complaints over the years. In May 1999, the House ethics committee privately chastised DeLay for threatening a Washington trade association with retaliation for hiring a prominent Democrat as its president.
Last month, a Texas grand jury indicted three of DeLay's political associates in a case involving a political committee affiliated with the majority leader. The House ethics committee is weighing a complaint against DeLay, unrelated to the Smith matter, which involves the Texas group and two other matters.
In a statement last night, DeLay said he accepted the ethics committee's "guidance," adding: "During my entire career I have worked to advance my party's legislative agenda. However, to this end, I would never knowingly violate the rules of the House."
Smith, who is retiring this year, touched off the ethics case soon after DeLay helped round up enough votes to pass the Medicare bill. He wrote a newspaper article in Michigan saying unnamed House leaders had promised substantial financial and political support for his son Brad -- who was running to succeed him -- if Smith would vote aye. Smith, who voted against the bill, also wrote that members had threatened to work against his son's campaign if he voted no. Brad Smith lost the Aug. 3 GOP primary.
Last night's report concluded that no one offered money to Brad Smith's campaign in exchange for the father's vote. It admonished Nick Smith for making allegations that appeared to stem from "speculation or exaggeration." It said Smith "failed to exercise reasonable judgment and restraint," and made statements that "risked impugning the reputation of the House."
The report also admonished Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.) for making comments about Brad Smith during the Nov. 22 roll call that appeared to be "a threat of retaliation" for Nick Smith's vote against the bill.
According to the report, Nick Smith told ethics committee investigators that DeLay approached him on the House floor during a series of votes leading to the final showdown on the Medicare bill. Smith told the panel that DeLay "told him that he would personally endorse Representative Smith's son in the Republican primary" if Smith "voted in favor of the Medicare legislation." According to Smith's version, DeLay added, "that's my last offer," and the congressman "teared up" at the majority leader's offer. The exchange lasted "about eight seconds," Smith said.
The report said DeLay testified to the committee "that he did say words to the effect of: 'I will personally endorse your son. That's my final offer.' " DeLay recalled that the exchange took place before the three-hour roll call on the bill's final passage, the report said.
DeLay told the investigators that Smith "first raised the subject of his son's campaign," and DeLay believed Smith was "fishing to see what I would say."
DeLay had brushed aside a similar overture from Smith several weeks earlier, but this time offered to endorse the son in exchange for Smith's vote, the report said. DeLay told investigators that if Smith had voted for the Medicare bill, then the majority leader "would have made good on his promise and endorsed Brad Smith."
-------- propaganda wars
The Media's Culpability for Iraq
by John Pilger
Antiwar.com
October 1, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=3685
In October 1999, I stood in a ward of dying children in Baghdad with Denis Halliday, who the previous year had resigned as assistant secretary general of the United Nations. He said: "We are waging a war through the United Nations on the people of Iraq. We're targeting civilians. Worse, we're targeting children. . . . What is this all about?"
Halliday had been 34 years with the UN. As an international civil servant much respected in the field of "helping people, not harming them," as he put it, he had been sent to Iraq to implement the oil-for-food program, which he subsequently denounced as a sham. "I am resigning," he wrote, "because the policy of economic sanctions is . . . destroying an entire society. Five thousand children are dying every month. I don't want to administer a program that satisfies the definition of genocide."
Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, another assistant secretary general with more than 30 years' service, also resigned in protest. Jutta Burghardt, the head of the World Food Program in Iraq, followed them, saying she could no longer tolerate what was being done to the Iraqi people. Their collective action was unprecedented; yet it received only passing media attention. There was no serious inquiry by journalists into their grave charges against the British and American governments, which in effect ran the embargo. Von Sponeck's disclosure that the sanctions restricted Iraqis to living on little more than $100 a year was not reported. "Deliberate strangulation," he called it. Neither was the fact that, up to July 2002, more than $5 billion worth of humanitarian supplies, which had been approved by the UN sanctions committee and paid for by Iraq, were blocked by George W. Bush, with Tony Blair's backing. They included food products, medicines and medical equipment, as well as items vital for water and sanitation, agriculture and education.
The cost in lives was staggering. Between 1991 and 1998, reported UNICEF, 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died. "If you include adults," said Halliday, "the figure is now almost certainly well over a million." In 1996, in an interview on the American current affairs program 60 Minutes, Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the UN, was asked: "We have heard that half a million children have died . . . is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it." The television network CBS has since refused to allow the videotape of that interview to be shown again, and the reporter will not discuss it.
Halliday and von Sponeck have long been personae non gratae in most of the U.S. and British media. What these whistleblowers have revealed is far too unpalatable: not only was the embargo a great crime against humanity, it actually reinforced Saddam Hussein's control. The reason why so many Iraqis feel bitter about the invasion and occupation is that they remember the Anglo-American embargo as a crippling, medieval siege that prevented them from overthrowing their dictatorship. This is almost never reported in Britain.
Halliday appeared on BBC2's Newsnight soon after he resigned. I watched the presenter Jeremy Paxman allow Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office minister, to abuse him as an "apologist for Saddam." Hain's shameful performance was not surprising. On the eve of this year's Labor Party conference, he dismissed Iraq as a "fringe issue."
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, wrote in the New Statesman recently that some journalists "consider it bad form to engage in public debate about anything to do with ethics or standards, never mind the fundamental purpose of journalism." It was a welcome departure from the usual clubbable stuff that passes for media comment but which rarely addresses "the fundamental purpose of journalism" - and especially not its collusive, lethal silences.
"When truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." He might have been referring to the silence over the devastating effects of the embargo. It is a silence that casts journalists as accessories, just as their silence contributed to an illegal and unprovoked invasion of a defenseless country. Yes, there was plenty of media noise prior to the invasion, but Blair's spun version dominated, and truth-tellers were sidelined. Scott Ritter was the UN's senior weapons inspector in Iraq. Ritter began his whistle-blowing more than five years ago when he said: "By 1998, [Iraq's] chemical weapons infrastructure had been completely dismantled or destroyed by UNSCOM. . . . The biological weapons program was gone, the major facilities eliminated. . . . The long-range ballistic missile program was completely eliminated. If I had to quantify Iraq's threat, I would say [it is] zero."
Ritter's truth was barely acknowledged. Like Halliday and von Sponeck, he was almost never mentioned on the television news, the principal source of most people's information. The studied obfuscation of Hans Blix was far more acceptable as the "balancing voice." That Blix, like Kofi Annan, was playing his own political games with Washington was never questioned.
Up to the fall of Baghdad, the misinformation and lies of Bush and Blair were channeled, amplified and legitimized by journalists, notably by the BBC, which defines its political coverage by the pronouncements, events and personalities of the "village" of Whitehall and Westminster. Andrew Gilligan broke this rule in his outstanding reporting from Baghdad and later his disclosure of Blair's most important deception. It is instructive that the most sustained attacks on him came from his fellow journalists.
In the crucial 18 months before Iraq was attacked, when Bush and Blair were secretly planning the invasion, famous, well-paid journalists became little more than channels, debriefers of the debriefers - what the French call fonctionnaires. The paramount role of real journalists is not to channel, but to challenge, not to fall silent, but to expose. There were honorable exceptions, notably Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian and the irrepressible Robert Fisk in the Independent. Two newspapers, the Mirror and the Independent, broke ranks. Apart from Gilligan and one or two others, broadcasters failed to reflect the public's own rising awareness of the truth. In commercial radio, a leading journalist who raised too many questions was instructed to "tone down the antiwar stuff because the advertisers won't like it."
In the United States, in the so-called mainstream of what is constitutionally the freest press in the world, the line held, with the result that Bush's lies were believed by the majority of the population. American journalists are now apologizing, but it is too late. The U.S. military is out of control in Iraq, bombarding densely populated areas with impunity. How many Iraqi families like Kenneth Bigley's are grieving? We do not experience their anguish, or hear their appeals for mercy. According to a recent estimate, roughly 37,000 Iraqis have died in this grotesque folly.
Charles Lewis, the former star CBS reporter who now runs the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., told me he was in no doubt that, had his colleagues done their job rather than acted as ciphers, the invasion would not have taken place. Such is the power of the modern media; it is a power we should reclaim from those subverting it.
-----
'Security Mom' Bloc Proves Hard to Find The Phenomenon May Be a Myth
Washington Post
By Richard Morin and Dan Balz
October 1, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63197-2004Sep30?language=printer
First there were the soccer moms. Then there was Sept. 11, 2001, and now these white married women with children have been recast as "security moms" -- a voting group that some analysts broadly predict will exert unique influence in this year's presidential election.
Stories in recent weeks have hailed the distinctiveness and political importance of security moms. But like the now-discredited "NASCAR dads" swing group before them, there is little if any hard evidence that security moms will have a distinctive impact in this election -- or that they even exist as a distinct group, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll and interviews with strategists from both parties.
As the label suggests, security moms purportedly are mothers disproportionately worried about terrorism and security issues. It is a group that is now "part of agenda-setting here," Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.
But others have found that security moms are not politically unique, nor do they "swing" politically. Instead, they are little different than married men with children on security-related issues, remain reliably conservative and Republican, and have moved in roughly equal proportions with men away from John F. Kerry and toward President Bush in the past six weeks.
According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, married women with children are worried about the same issues that concern other voters. In fact, these women were no more likely than other voters to name terrorism, security or Iraq as their top voting issue.
About one in four married women with children -- 24 percent -- rated terrorism as their major concern. That is virtually identical to the proportion of married men and only slightly higher than the 21 percent of all voters who made terrorism their top voting issue. One in five -- 20 percent -- of all married women with children named Iraq as their major concern; overall, 19 percent said Iraq.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg is among those who have tried to debunk the idea that security moms are the source of Kerry's problem among female voters -- or that security moms represent a distinctive bloc of voters.
By Greenberg's analysis, women most likely to be supporting Bush are married and have young children, a group that she said makes up 26 percent of all female voters. "We know that married white women are conservative," she said. "The notion that this is a group that is moving around is false. It's a conservative group of voters -- on security, social issues and taxes."
Greenberg also challenged the assumption that women are more likely than men to cite security as the issue that they care about most. "If you ask women what the most important issue is, it's dominated by economic issues, particularly health care," she said.
Kerry's weakness, Greenberg said, "is among Democratic women, where he's underperforming, and I think it's because they haven't heard about health care and retirement for two months."
Four years ago, Bush split the votes of married women with Al Gore but lost among unmarried women by about 2 to 1. Greenberg said Kerry's challenge is to boost his support among married women. In the latest Post-ABC News poll, Kerry leads Bush 53 percent to 40 percent among single women but he trails Bush by 16 points among married women.
Republican pollster Linda DiVall said Bush has attracted more support from women in part because of the image he projects. "Women see a strong and resourceful leader and haven't figured out where Kerry is on that," she said.
But DiVall agreed that security moms are not an easily identifiable voting bloc, such as single-issue antiabortion voters or what she called "Medicare grandmothers."
"It's not a group where you can say here's a 12 percent voting bloc," she added.
-------- us politics
Iraq Takes Center Stage in Debate
Bush and Kerry Clash Over How Best to Protect U.S. From Terrorism
By Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63133-2004Sep30?language=printer
CORAL GABLES, Fla., Sept. 30 -- President Bush and John F. Kerry clashed over the Iraq war Thursday night in an intense and substantive first debate, in which the Democratic nominee charged that the war was a diversion from the more important war against al Qaeda and the president defended the conflict as crucial to the nation's security.
In their first face-to-face encounter, the two presidential candidates repeatedly returned to the themes that have dominated the campaign. The Massachusetts senator accused the president of "misleading" the nation as he went to war, while Bush said nine times that Kerry's "mixed messages" and "mixed signals" mean he does not have the steadiness to be an effective commander in chief.
"The president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment, and judgment is what we look for in the president of the United States of America," Kerry said of the war. "I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden."
Bush countered that Kerry's criticism of the war in Iraq would make it impossible for him to lead allies to victory there. "What's the message going to be: -- Please join us in Iraq for a 'grand diversion'?" Bush asked. Allies, he said, "are not going to follow somebody who says this is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. They're not going to follow somebody whose core convictions keep changing because of politics in America."
There were no glaring mistakes by either candidate during the 90-minute debate at the University of Miami, although Bush often appeared agitated, scowling at times as Kerry leveled his charges. While both delivered their messages forcefully, Kerry sharply questioned the president's credibility and highlighted his own ability to serve as commander in chief.
It will take days to see how the millions of American viewers reacted to the debate, but instant polls by the major networks, subject to less rigorous methodology than the high-profile campaign polls, showed Kerry had significantly outperformed Bush. The Democrat was hoping a strong performance would reduce the narrow but consistent lead Bush has had in opinion polls nationally and in key electoral states.
Both men appealed to the widespread fear and unease in the nation by suggesting his opponent would be a more dangerous choice. Bush reminded viewers of the menace of foreign terrorists. "We are facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their hearts, they'll strike anywhere with any means," he said, also arguing that "the biggest disaster that could happen is that we not succeed in Iraq."
Kerry, by contrast, painted an ominous portrait of Iraq: "We see beheadings, and we got weapons of mass destruction crossing the border every single day, and they're blowing people up." He suggested Americans have more to fear at home. "Ninety-five percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected," he said. "Civilians get onto aircraft and their luggage is X-rayed, but the cargo hold is not X-rayed. Does that make you feel safer in America?"
The candidates hewed to their well-known styles. Kerry cited many statistics and used sometimes elaborate arguments to make his point. The president frequently employed slogans from his campaign stump speech and often put Kerry on the defensive by shifting from questions about his own record to questions about Kerry's capabilities.
When Bush, responding to a question about Iraq, said "the enemy attacked us," Kerry called Bush's remark "extraordinarily revealing" and added: "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us; Osama bin Laden attacked us."
"Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us," Bush replied.
Bush repeatedly talked about how hard the war was, and spoke most passionately about praying and crying with the wife of fallen soldier. "I told her her husband's sacrifice was noble and worthy, because I understand the stakes in the war on terror," he said. "Every life is precious."
Kerry, who has been criticized by a group of Vietnam veterans for leading antiwar protests and talking about how U.S. soldiers committed war crimes, said his experience in the early 1970s taught him to speak out in troubled times. "It reminds me it is vital for us not to confuse the war -- ever -- with the warrior. That happened before," he said. Kerry sought to turn the president's laserlike focus on consistency against him. "It is one thing to be certain. But you can be certain and be wrong."
The debate revisited many of the well-known disagreements from the campaign and repeatedly returned to its central themes: Kerry doubting Bush's "credibility" at home and abroad, and Bush repeatedly doubting Kerry's ability to command and not "waver."
Kerry suggested that Bush could have captured bin Laden. "We had him surrounded, but we didn't use American forces, the best-trained in the world, to go kill him," Kerry said. "The president relied on Afghan warlords that he outsourced that job to."
As he often does on the stump, Bush ridiculed Kerry's vote against a spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan and the Democrat's explanation that he voted for it "before I voted against it." "That's not what a commander in chief does when you're trying to lead troops," Bush said.
Kerry ceded the point but sought to portray Bush's errors as greater, saying: "I made a mistake in how I talk about the war, but the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?" He added: "I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. That's what I learned in Vietnam. . . . And I'm going to lead those troops to victory."
Both candidates caricatured and exaggerated each other's positions. But the debate, coming after a campaign full of attack ads and bitter disputes about each man's service during the Vietnam War, was relatively high-minded and substantive. The two did not strongly question each other's character, and even took time to praise each other, Bush noting Kerry's relationship with his daughters and Kerry offering kind words for the first lady.
Kerry portrayed Hussein as a lesser threat than al Qaeda. "The president moved the troops so he's got 10 times the number of troops in Iraq than he has in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is," he said. "Does that mean that Saddam Hussein was 10 times more important than Osama bin Laden? I don't think so."
Bush avoided a question about whether the country would be more susceptible to terrorist attack under Kerry -- something Bush's campaign has often done. "I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead," he said. "I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions that I've made. And I've made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand."
Kerry sought to rebut Bush's charge, highly effective so far, that he "wilts" and "wavers." "I have no intention of wilting," he said. "I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life. I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent.
Bush retorted: "The only thing consistent about my opponent's position is that he's been inconsistent. He changes positions. And you cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win."
The two frequently returned to the question of whether Bush failed to enlist allies in the war in Iraq. "I think we need a president who has the credibility to bring the allies back to the table and to do what's necessary to make it so America isn't doing this alone," Kerry said.
Kerry criticized Bush for shunning alliances. "This president has left them in shatters across the globe, and we're now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs. I think that's wrong, and I think we can do better."
Bush portrayed Kerry's remarks as insulting to Britain, Poland and other nations that have contributed to the war. "I don't appreciate it when a candidate for president denigrates the contributions of these brave soldiers," he said.
Still, the candidates came across as largely agreeing on many of the key issues of the debate. Both said they would continue the war in Iraq until victory is at hand, train Iraqis to provide security and continue to press allies to provide additional assistance, especially as the January election draws near. They both promised robust programs to secure borders, ports and airlines and target nuclear proliferation as their top priority over the next four years.
The candidates disagreed most sharply on North Korea, which during Bush's term has evicted international inspectors and reprocessed enough plutonium to produce half a dozen nuclear weapons. Kerry called for bilateral talks with the North Korean government to give up its weapons. Bush blasted that idea as a "serious mistake," saying it would end the multi-nation diplomacy underway by the administration.
The candidates appeared to differ on the potential of sending U.S. troops to restore peace in Sudan, where ethnic fighting has ravaged the Darfur region. Both called the situation "genocide," and said the African Union should take the lead role in restoring order. But Kerry said the United States should commit more logistical assistance now and consider a larger role if the African Union needs it to end the bloodshed.
The debate was seen, along with each party's nominating convention, as one of the most significant events of the general-election campaign. Both parties viewed the exchange as the best -- and possibly last -- chance for Kerry to erase the narrow but consistent lead Bush has had in polls nationally and in key electoral states.
The candidates clashed for 90 minutes from twin lecterns set up in a converted basketball arena at the University of Miami. Standing on a red carpet before a patriotic backdrop, they fielded questions from moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS in an exchange governed by strict rules agreed on by the two campaigns as a way to limit surprises. The first of three debates, it was designed to cover only foreign affairs and homeland security -- which because of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq have replaced the economy as the campaign's main focus.
The two men sparred over Iraq policy after a particularly violent day in that country. Bombs in a west Baghdad neighborhood killed at least 34 children and seven adults and wounded scores, including 10 American soldiers. A U.S. soldier and several Iraqis were killed by car bombs outside of Baghdad and in the northern city of Tall Afar, while insurgents in Iraq attacked a support area for U.S.-led coalition forces and took 10 more hostages.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Ag Department Wind Energy Program Stalled
October 1, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-01-09.asp#anchor7
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not fully utilized all of the 2002 Farm Bill's renewable energy provisions to promote wind power development on farms and in rural communities, according to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The study by the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress finds the USDA has failed to implement a loan guarantee program for farmers to develop wind energy projects.
The 2002 farm bill authorized $115 million though fiscal year 2007 for renewable energy initiatives, part of which are earmarked for wind energy projects.
Many Midwestern lawmakers are eager to boost such projects in agricultural areas, where farmers can benefit from lease payments or direct ownership of turbines tucked between crops on their lands.
The department offered grants totaling $7.4 million for 35 wind power projects in eight states in fiscal year 2003, the program's first year, but it has not implemented the loan and loan guarantee components of the program.
"Without the latter, USDA has not fully fulfilled farm bill provisions and limits the ability of the program to promote renewable energy sources," according to the GAO report.
The report calls on the agriculture Department to form rules to govern the program that would enable it to offer loans and loan guarantees in order to "achieve a much higher level of program activity, potentially increasing the number of projects financed and providing benefits such as increased economic opportunities in rural areas."
The GAO study notes that wind power does not currently contribute much to total farm income in the 10 states with the highest installed wind power capacity, but it finds that some individual farmers and rural communities have benefited from this energy source.
In these 10 states, net farm income was about $14 billion in 2002, but total direct income to farmers from wind power ranged from only $10 million to $45 million, representing a fraction of one percent of net farm income.
But the report says that wind projects located on farms have increased some individual farmers' income by tens of thousands of dollars annually.
"Farmers generally find leasing their land for wind power projects to be easier than owning projects," the report said. "Leasing is easier because, unlike farmers, energy companies have the financial resources and legal and technical expertise to address the costs, complexity, tax advantages, and risks of wind power development."
-------- energy
Conoco Wins $2 Bln Russian LUKOIL Stake
REUTERS RUSSIA:
October 1, 2004
Story by Mikhail Yenukov and Richard Ayton
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27457/story.htm
MOSCOW - ConocoPhillips said on Wednesday it was seeking 20 percent of Russia's LUKOIL in a far-reaching alliance that opens the way for the oil majors to tap vast reserves in northern Russia and Iraq.
Announcement of the agreement, which both parties said enjoyed the strong support of the U.S. and Russian governments, followed the purchase at auction by Conoco of Russia's remaining 7.6 percent stake in LUKOIL for $1.988 billion.
Conoco, the third largest U.S. oil firm, has agreed that it will not raise its shareholding in LUKOIL, one of Russia's two top oil producers, above 20 percent for the foreseeable future, Conoco's chief executive James Mulva told a news conference.
Mulva said Conoco would raise its stake to 10 percent by the end of the year and gradually boost its shareholding to the 20 percent agreed ceiling over two to three years.
The deal is the most ambitious investment by a western oil major since BP last year paid more than $7 billion to establish a joint oil venture, now known as TNK-BP.
It is also seen as a vote of confidence in the Russian oil industry in view of the $7 billion tax dispute between YUKOS and the Kremlin that could wind up with a carve-up of YUKOS, the oil major founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"You have ConocoPhillips making a $2 billion dollar investment in the Russian oil and gas market, which is a huge vote of confidence. It's an excellent acquisition," said Scott Semet, head of equities research at MDM Financial Research.
OLD GLORY
LUKOIL hoisted the U.S. flag outside its headquarters in Moscow, alongside the Russian and Moscow flags, before the start of a joint news conference with Conoco. Wednesday's news marks the latest in a flurry of foreign oil deals in recent weeks. France's Total last week agreed to buy a 25 percent stake in Novatek, Russia's largest independent gas producer, for around $1 billion.
That agreement followed the signing by South Korea of energy deals worth $4 billion with Russia.
The LUKOIL deal will allow Conoco to add billions of barrels of reserves to its books - LUKOIL has the world's second largest oil reserves after ExxonMobil of the United States.
Although Houston-based Conoco had been widely tipped to win the auction of the government's minority stake in LUKOIL, the scale of alliance is more ambitious. Under the agreement, announced in a regulatory news release, Conoco said it would tender to buy a further 2.4 percent in LUKOIL on the open market at $30.56 a share - just below the $30.76 it paid in the auction.
CEO Mulva said Wednesday's share purchase and the acquisition of the additional 2.4 percent would be funded from cashflow with some short-term borrowing. "There will be no sale of assets nor does it in any way alter the current and future plans of (Conoco) capital spending," he added.
Shares of LUKOIL lost their gains of around 1.5 percent after the announcement and were trading 1.4 percent down at $31 per share in afternoon trade. ConocoPhillips stock was off 1 percent at $82.35 in New York.
JOINT PROJECTS
The two firms said they would form a joint venture - 70 percent owned by LUKOIL and 30 percent by Conoco - to develop Russia's northern Timan-Pechora oil region.
Conoco will pay $370 million for its stake in the venture, and contribute 30 percent of working capital and 30 percent of capital investments effective Jan. 1 of this year.
The venture, to be governed 50-50 by the two companies, expects to produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day by 2008. Production will be piped to LUKOIL's Varandey Bay terminal on the Barents Sea and then shipped to international markets.
LUKOIL will expand the capacity of the terminal to 240,000 bpd by 2007.
The firms will also team up in Iraq in a bid to win the right to develop the West Qurna oil field, with Conoco aiming eventually to gain a 17.5 percent interest in a production sharing agreement.
Analysts said the future of West Qurna was still shrouded in uncertainty.
LUKOIL won rights to develop the field under then ruler Saddam Hussein in 1997 but it was scrapped in the last months of his rule and it is unclear whether Iraq's new government will recognize the contract.
However, having a powerful U.S. company lobbying for LUKOIL's exploration rights to be upheld may help secure the contract. "We will now have a U.S. company lobbying for a Saddam-era contract," said Christopher Granville, a strategist at UFG in London.
"We are satisfied. This is the biggest transaction in Russian (privatization) history," LUKOIL Vice-President Leonid Fedun told reporters.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
With Russia's Nod, Treaty on Emissions Clears Last Hurdle
October 1, 2004
The New York Times
By SETH MYDANS and ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/europe/01russia.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MOSCOW, Sept. 30 - The long-delayed Kyoto Protocol on global warming overcame its last critical hurdle to taking effect around the world on Thursday when Russia's cabinet endorsed the treaty and sent it to Parliament. The treaty, the first to require cuts in emissions linked to global warming, would take effect 90 days after Parliament's approval, a formality that was widely expected.
The United States has rejected the treaty and will not be bound by its restrictions. But the treaty, which has already been ratified by 120 countries will take effect if supporters include nations accounting for at least 55 percent of all industrialized countries' 1990-level emissions. The only way for it to cross that threshold was with ratification by Russia. In 1990, the United States accounted for 36.1 percent of emissions from industrialized countries, and Russia 17.4 percent.
The protocol was dormant over the last two years as Russia considered its merits and sought concessions from the European Union, the treaty's main proponent.
The treaty is widely considered a milestone of international environmental diplomacy. It is the first agreement that sets binding restrictions on emissions of heat-trapping gases that, for now, remain an unavoidable result of almost any facet of modern life, including driving a car and running a power plant. The main source of the dominant gas, carbon dioxide, is burning coal and oil.
But many specialists say that, at the same time, the protocol is just the tiniest initial step toward limiting the human influence on the climate, given that its targets are small and that the United States will not be bound by its terms. China, a major polluter that did sign the treaty, is not bound by its restrictions because it is considered a developing country.
The treaty would require 36 industrialized countries to reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases by 2012 to more than five percent below 1990 levels, with different targets negotiated for individual countries.
By one calculation, it would take more than 40 times the emissions reductions required under the treaty to prevent a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in this century.
Still, the decision by the government of President Vladimir V. Putin to endorse the treaty was "cause for celebration," said Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.
He acknowledged that the Kyoto accord was "only the first step in a long journey towards stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions." But Mr. Toepfer added that Russia's move sent a vital signal to developing countries, which supported the treaty only if it excused them from reductions, and the small number of wealthy nations that still oppose curbs on the gases that cause global warming, most notably the United States.
"I hope other nations, some of whom, like Russia, have maybe been in the past reluctant to ratify, will now join us in this truly global endeavor," he said.
In Washington, Harlan L. Watson, the chief State Department negotiator on climate issues, said Russia's decision would not change the Bush administration's rejection of the treaty. Mr. Watson said the United States would continue to focus on long-term research to find new nonpolluting sources of energy or ways to limit the buildup of carbon dioxide.
A spokesman for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has criticized the Bush administration's position on global warming, was quick to seize on Russia's decision. "George Bush made a catastrophic mistake when he declared a decade's work of 160 nations dead on arrival instead of working with our allies to fix the treaty and lead on global warming,'' said the spokesman, David Wade. "We're still paying a heavy price for his unilateralism."
One more step is required in Russia for the pact to take effect - approval by the Parliament, or Duma. But the body is dominated by supporters of Mr. Putin, so approval is expected, even though Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov predicted a "difficult debate." The treaty would take effect 90 days after the Duma approval.
Mr. Putin made no public statement on Thursday. His top economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, who had opposed the pact, said that the decision to endorse it had been made for political reasons and that the task now would be to try to minimize what he called the treaty's negative consequences for Russia.
He said compliance would slow Russia's economic growth and make it impossible to meet Mr. Putin's stated goal of doubling the gross domestic product within a decade.
"It's not a decision we are making with pleasure," Mr. Illarionov said, the Interfax news agency reported.
The European Union had pressed Russia for more than a year to accept the pact. In Brussels, Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, said "President Putin has sent a strong signal of his commitment and sense of responsibility."
Mr. Illarionov had said the treaty was based on false and even deceptive scientific assumptions.
His views conflict with a broad international scientific consensus that the buildup of long-lived gases, which act like the panes in a greenhouse roof, is likely to disrupt weather patterns and water supplies and threaten coasts by raising sea levels.
German Gref, Russia's economic development minister, called the treaty "a progressive step" but said, "It will hardly be decisive in radically improving the environmental situation."
Breaking with Mr. Illarionov, Mr. Gref added that the treaty was unlikely to undermine Russia's economic growth.
In Washington, some lobbyists for American industries opposed to the treaty suggested there was a chance that Mr. Putin still opposed it and was planning for Parliament to reject it - as proof that he was not consolidating power.
But in Moscow, the mood among environmental activists was cautiously upbeat.
Vladimir Azkharov, director of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, a lobbying group, said the treaty "very, very probably" would be approved in parliament, although he said, "there is no guarantee."
President Bush summarily rejected the treaty in 2001, saying it would burden the economy by limiting use of fossil fuels and would unfairly exclude big developing countries from curbs on emissions. The Senate had long ago signaled its opposition for the same reasons.
China and other developing countries, while signing the treaty, only did so because it obligated established industrial powers to act first.
Last December, in what seemed a definitive rejection, Mr. Illarionov said Russia would not sign the treaty. In May, however, Mr. Putin promised to speed ratification, in a move widely interpreted as a concession to gain support from the European Union for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization. International environmental groups expressed satisfaction at the news.
"As the Earth is battered by increasing storms, floods and droughts, President Putin has brought us to a pivotal point in human history," Steve Sawyer, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace International, said. "The Bush administration is out in the cold and the rest of the world can move forward."
In a telephone interview, Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense, said, "What is significant is that it will be a market signal heard around the world, a signal that we are moving into a carbon-constrained future."
The treaty, named for the Japanese city of Kyoto where it was negotiated in 1997, is an outgrowth of a 1992 pact, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, that was signed by Mr. Bush's father and under which countries agreed to strive to bring their emissions of the gases to 1990 levels by 2000.
By the mid-1990s, however, it was clear that the targets would not be met, leading to a new round of talks toward a binding protocol with firm targets and penalties.
Its basic architecture and targets were hastily negotiated in December 1997 in Kyoto. But momentum was lost after Mr. Bush rejected it and after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Some of its biggest weaknesses now stem from the long delays. Subsequent economic activity and rising emissions have threatened to put Europe and Japan, its main backers, out of compliance.
The treaty provides various strategies through which countries can reach their targets without actually reducing emissions at home. Investments can be made in poor countries to save forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, or introduce efficient technologies, which use less fuel.
It permits emissions trading, in which one country buys the right to emit from another that has already exceeded its targets for reducing emissions and has extra credits.
Prof. David G. Victor, a political scientist at Stanford and longtime student of the protocol, said Russia had nothing to lose by moving ahead, since it surpassed its Kyoto targets before they were set.
After the Russian economy collapsed with the fall of Communism, the country's greenhouse gas emissions fell far below 1990 levels, leaving it with a bonanza of tradable credits earned when it surpassed its targets for reducing emissions. For Europe this bundle of credits is a mixed blessing now, Mr. Victor said.
The European Union recently passed legislation creating an internal trading market under the protocol's terms, so that richer member states, like Britain, could get credit toward targets by investing in emissions-cutting projects in poorer, more polluted, ones, like Spain. But under the treaty's terms, Europe, Japan, and other industrialized participants can buy credits from Russia as well. If Russia now starts selling its credits to Europe, there will be little incentive for companies within the European Union to push ahead with plans to cut emissions that would be more costly, Mr. Victor said.
Seth Mydans reported from Moscow for this article, and Andrew C.Revkin from Washington.
--------
Mount St. Helens Releasing Steam, After Days of Quakes
October 1, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-St-Helens-Quakes.html
SEATTLE (AP) -- Mount St. Helens began belching a huge column of white steam Friday after days of rumblings and earthquakes that suggested the volcano that erupted with cataclysmic force in 1980 was about to blow its top again.
It was not immediately known if this was the eruption that scientists have been warning of for days.
For the past week, scientists have detected thousands of earthquakes of increasing strength -- as high as magnitude 3.3 -- at a mountain best known for its devastating eruption in 1980. The eruption killed 57 people and coated towns 250 miles away with ash.
The flurry of earthquakes at Mount St. Helens intensified further Thursday, and one scientist put the chance of a small eruption happening in the next few days at 70 percent.
Jeff Wynn, chief scientist at the U.S. Geologic Survey's Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., said tiny quakes were happening three or four times a minute. Larger quakes, with magnitudes of 3 to 3.3, were happening every three or four minutes, he said.
New measurements show the 975-foot lava dome in the volcano's crater has moved 2 1/2 inches to the north since Monday, Wynn said.
``Imagine taking a 1,000-foot-high pile of rocks and moving it 2 1/2 inches. For a geologist, that's a lot of energy,'' Wynn said.
Wynn estimated there was a 70 percent chance the activity will result in an eruption.
Scientists did not expect anything like the mountain's devastating eruption in 1980, which killed 57 people and coated towns 250 miles away with ash. On Wednesday, they warned that a small or moderate blast from the southwest Washington mountain could spew ash and rock as far as three miles from the 8,364-foot peak.
Scientists planned to fly over the volcano again Thursday to test for gasses that could indicate the presence of magma moving beneath the volcano.
Few people live near the mountain, which is in a national forest about 100 miles south of Seattle. The closest structure is the Johnston Ridge Observatory, about five miles from the crater.
The heightened alert has drawn a throng of sightseers to observation areas. Dawn Smith, co-owner of Eco Park Resort west of the mountain, told The News Tribune of Tacoma, ``It's just been crazy the past couple of days.''
A sign in front of her business reads, ``Here we go again.''
The Geological Survey raised the mountain's eruption advisory from Level 1 to Level 2 out of a possible 4 on Wednesday, prompting officials to begin notifying various state and federal agencies of a possible eruption. The USGS also has asked the National Weather Service to be ready to track an ash plume with its radar.
In addition, scientists called off a plan to have two researchers study water rushing from the crater's north face for signs of magma. A plane was still able to fly over the crater Wednesday to collect gas samples. Negligible amounts of volcanic gas were found.
``An aircraft can move ... out of the way fast,'' Wynn said. ``We don't want anyone in there on foot.''
The USGS has been monitoring St. Helens closely since Sept. 23, when swarms of tiny earthquakes were first recorded. On Sunday, scientists issued a notice of volcanic unrest, closing the crater and upper flanks of the volcano to hikers and climbers.
Scientists said they believe the seismic activity is being caused by pressure from a reservoir of molten rock a little more than a mile below the crater. That magma apparently rose from a depth of about six miles in 1998, but never reached the surface, Wynn said.
The mountain's eruption on May 18, 1980, blasted away its top 1,300 feet, spawned mudflows that choked the Columbia River shipping channel, leveled hundreds of square miles of forest and paralyzed towns and cities more than 250 miles to the east with volcanic ash.
On the Net:
U.S. Geological Survey regional site: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Cascades/CurrentActivity/
Pacific Northwest Seismic Network:
http://www.pnsn.org/HELENS/welcome.html
Eco Park:
http://www.ecoparkresort.com/
--------
Inspector General Says E.P.A. Rule Aids Polluters
October 1, 2004
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/01epa.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - In a rebuke of the Bush administration, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday that legal actions against major polluters had stalled because of the agency's decision to revise rules governing emissions at older coal-fired power plants.
The inspector general, Nikki L. Tinsley, took direct aim at the administration's revision of the New Source Review rule, one of the administration's most prominent - and vilified - environmental initiatives, saying that it makes it easier for power-plant operators to postpone or avoid adding technologies that reduce polluting emissions.
The revised rule, made final last year, has not been put in effect yet because of legal challenges. But the report concludes that just by issuing the rule, which scuttled the enforcement approach of the Clinton administration, the agency has "seriously hampered" its ability to settle cases and pursue new ones.
Ms. Tinsley's report serves as a sharp challenge to Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an assistant E.P.A. administrator who has been the agency's leading proponent of the new rule. Ms. Tinsley said in the report that her investigators found little basis for the new rule and suggested, "This is an excellent opportunity for E.P.A. to fully consider - in an open, public, and transparent manner - the environmental impact of proposed N.S.R. changes at varying levels."
Appearing before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Public Works Committees in 2002, Mr. Holmstead said, "We do not believe these changes will have a negative impact on the enforcement cases."
While the language of the report is critical, the inspector general cannot force the agency to do anything.
The report also showcased a split in the agency between political officials in the air quality office, which Mr. Holmstead leads, and lawyers charged with enforcement, including some who have left the agency in frustration. Responding to Ms. Tinley's questions about the reasonableness of the relaxed new rule, the air quality office defended it, saying it allowed utilities to improve efficiency, safety and reliability; enforcement officials said the rule would most likely eviscerate the air enforcement program.
The E.P.A., which was expecting a critical review, released a statement that largely echoed its original response to a draft of Ms. Tinsley's report. The statement said, "The report misses the mark, misleads rather than enlightens the public and portrays a superficial and inaccurate characterization of agency policies."
Industry groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which strongly support the new rule, sounded similar tones.
Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade organization, said in a statement, "It is frustrating that E.P.A.'s own inspector general could so completely misconstrue the purpose of the New Source Review requirements and, simultaneously, shortchange the agency's own success in improving air quality."
But the report was applauded by environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Physicians for Social Responsibility, as well as lawmakers opposed to efforts to roll back the rules of the Clinton administration.
Before the revision of the rule, the E.P.A. had reached settlements with several industrial companies that agreed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars installing modern pollution controls to reduce emissions, and many other companies were in settlement talks with the enforcement branch of agency. Once the agency set the new rules, those companies were no longer under pressure to agree to similar settlements.
"This report is further evidence that the Bush administration has been trying to gut the enforcement of the Clean Air Act since coming into office," said Senator James M. Jeffords, a Vermont independent who was one of several senators to ask the inspector general to review the proposed New Source Review rules.
John Walke, director of the Clean Air Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the report "confirms that top political officials at the agency charged with protecting public health had to have known that they were letting power plants off the hook for pollution that shortens lives and triggers asthma attacks."
Before President Bush took office, the E.P.A. and the Justice Department went after dirty plant operators on a case-by-case basis when investigators determined that "significant" upgrades had been made without adding required cleanup technologies. Under the Bush proposal, the requirement would not be triggered until plant upgrades reached a cost of 20 percent of the value of the plant - even though agency enforcement officials recommended that the trigger be set no higher than three-quarters of one percent.
Ms. Tinsley, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, said in the report that under the prior case-by-case standard, legal action over a 10-year period resulted in 650,000 tons of reduced emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. She said current enforcement actions could lead to another 2.3 million tons of reductions but that the likelihood of looser restrictions had caused plant operators to put off making upgrades.
--------
Russian OK clears way for Kyoto
Story by Darya Korsunskaya
REUTERS RUSSIA:
October 1, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27461/story.htm
MOSCOW - The Russian government has approved the Kyoto Protocol, giving decisive support to the long-delayed climate change treaty that should allow it to come into force worldwide.
President Vladimir Putin's cabinet decided to send the 1997 U.N. pact to the State Duma lower house, dominated by Kremlin supporters, for ratification. Opponents maintained it would harm the economy and do little to protect the environment.
Victorious backers of Kyoto, which orders cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming, made clear they believed it would have no effect on the environment or the economy and that the decision was politically motivated.
The European Union hailed Moscow's decision yesterday and seized the moment to urge Washington, whose rejection of the pact in 2001 left it dependent on Russia's approval, to rethink its position.
"The fate of the Kyoto protocol depends on Russia. If we ... rejected ratification, we would become the ones to blame (for its failure)," Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov told the cabinet meeting.
Russia, which accounts for 17 percent of world emissions, has held the key to Kyoto's success since the U.S. pullout.
Kyoto becomes binding once it has been ratified by 55 percent of the signatories, which must altogether account for 55 percent of developed countries' carbon dioxide emissions.
The pact, so far ratified by 122 nations, has met the first condition. But they account for only 44 percent of emissions.
Russia initially prevaricated on ratification. But in May Putin backed it in exchange for EU agreement on the terms of Moscow's admission to the World Trade Organisation.
"We warmly welcome the decision," a European Commission spokesman said in Brussels. He added that the EU was encouraging Washington to review its attitude to the pact.
Environmentalists and experts were equally positive.
"Now he (Putin) can go down in history as the saviour (of Kyoto)," said Benito Mueller, an expert for British-based think-tank the Royal Institute for International Affairs.
BATTLES AHEAD?
Thursday's meeting left unanswered the question of when parliament could practically debate ratification. The head of the Duma's international affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, suggested that was unlikely before the end of the year.
There is no time limit for the cabinet to send a ratification request to the Duma. Interfax said ministries linked to the environment had been given three months to work out practical measures arising from Russia's obligations.
Proponents of Kyoto say that apart from improving the environment worldwide, the pact would force Russia to upgrade industry to new standards and help it earn billions of dollars selling excess quotas for gas emissions to polluters abroad.
Opponents said Russia would lose out.
"The Academy of Science confirms its position that the protocol is not effective and gives us no advantages," the head of the academy's institute on climate change and ecology, Yuri Izrael, told the cabinet meeting.
Putin's economic adviser Andrei Illarionov warned that new environmental standards would cost industry more and undermine the Kremlin's plan to double gross domestic product in 10 years.
"Many economic calculations show that if the protocol is ratified, the doubling of GDP becomes impossible in the next 10 years," Illarionov said.
But Economic Development Minister German Gref, Illarionov's rival for Putin's ear, said that when making the decision the cabinet aimed at setting a good international precedent rather than focusing on economic or environmental concerns.
"I do not subscribe to the opinion that ratification could in any substantial way affect the pace of our economic development," he told reporters.
"The protocol hardly has any real impact on improving ecology. It is fairly symbolic."
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, visiting the Netherlands, predicted tough Duma battles. But Kosachev said the Duma was likely to ratify without difficulty after the cabinet ruling.
-------- health
Lycopene, Vitamin E Reduce Prostate Tumors in Mice
Story by Patricia Reaney
REUTERS UK:
October 1, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27471/story.htm
LONDON - Scientists are testing the impact of vitamin E and a synthetic version of lycopene, a compound in tomatoes, in cancer patients after they found that the combination slowed the growth of prostate tumors in mice.
Lycopene is what gives tomatoes their rich red color. Studies have suggested that it can reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
Dr Jacqueline Limpens, of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, presented new research at a medical meeting yesterday showing that in mice studies, the impact of lycopene can be enhanced by twinning it with vitamin E.
"The combination of lycopene and vitamin E produced the most active response and the most significant," Limpens said in a telephone news conference from the meeting in Geneva.
She and her team tested low and high doses of synthetic lycopene alone and combined with vitamin E and a combination of low dose lycopene and low vitamin E against a placebo in mice injected with human prostate cancer cells.
"What was particularly marked was that it was the low dose of both lycopene and vitamin E that was the most effective, demonstrating that 'more does not necessarily equal better,"' said Limpens.
The combination reduced the growth of the tumors by 73 percent by the 42nd day of the trial.
A study testing the compounds in cancer patients is now under way. Prostate cancer kills about 200,000 men each year, mostly in developed countries. Most men diagnosed with the disease are usually 65 or older.
The incidence of the disease is rising in many countries but experts believe it is due largely to improved screening. It is usually treated with surgery or radiation treatment.
Limpens said the findings are in line with research suggesting that vitamin E and lycopene could have a protective effect against prostate cancer.
"Therefore we would certainly recommend that all men regularly eat lycopene and vitamin-E-rich foods: for example, all kinds of processed tomato products, papayas, pink grapefruit and watermelon, wheat germs, whole grains, mangoes, leafy green vegetables, nuts and olive oils," she added in a statement.
----
Merck recalls Vioxx
October 01, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040930-100336-3743r.htm
TRENTON, N.J. - Vioxx, the blockbuster arthritis drug taken by 2 million people, was pulled from the market by its maker yesterday after a study found it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Experts advised patients to immediately stop taking Vioxx and talk to their doctors about alternatives.
"Given the availability of alternative therapies, and the questions raised by the data, we concluded that a voluntary withdrawal is the responsible course to take," said Raymond V. Gilmartin, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Merck & Co.
The news of Vioxx's dangers came five years after Merck put the drug on the market with great fanfare. Vioxx has become one of the world's most aggressively marketed drugs, advertised in magazines and in TV commercials, with celebrity endorsements from former athletes Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner.
The withdrawal is a serious blow for the New Jersey company, the world's third-largest drug maker. Vioxx accounted for $2.5 billion in worldwide sales in 2003 and has been taken by 84 million people worldwide since its introduction.
Merck stock fell $12.07, or nearly 27 percent, to $32.90 in heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. Merck dragged down the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was off by 56 points.
Merck's recall of its Vioxx painkiller surprised pharmacies in the United States and Canada, leaving them unprepared to handle questions from concerned patients and doctors looking for alternatives and trying to get information about reimbursement.
Vioxx, which is also prescribed for acute pain and disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome, is seen as a potential cancer-prevention medicine. In fact, the recall was prompted by a three-year study aimed at showing the drug could prevent the recurrence of potentially cancerous polyps in the colon and rectum.
Participants taking Vioxx for more than 18 months were found to be twice as likely as those given placebos to have a heart attack, stroke or other heart complications.
The Food and Drug Administration said there were early signs of potential problems with Vioxx. A Merck study led to warnings about heart risks being placed on the drug's label in 2001, and the FDA has been monitoring problems that have been reported since then.
"This is not a total surprise," said Dr. Steven Galson, acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Vioxx is part of a class of anti-inflammatory drugs called cox-2 inhibitors that have been heavily touted by the pharmaceutical industry as being more effective and having fewer side effects, particularly on the stomach, than older drugs. Pfizer's Celebrex and Bextra are also cox-2 inhibitors. But so far there has been no evidence that these other drugs pose any dangers to the heart.
Officials do not know how Vioxx may be causing the increased risk.
Alternatives to Vioxx include generic pain relievers such as ibuprofen and aspirin, as well as Celebrex.
"There are very few patients for whom there won't be a good alternative drug," said Dr. Steven Abramson, director of rheumatology at New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases. Dr. Abramson said there is no reason for those who used Vioxx in the past to panic; he said there is no evidence that the elevated risk of heart attack persists after a patient has stopped taking the drug.
Personal-injury lawyers already have begun circling Merck. Trial lawyer Wayne Cohen said the decision has opened the company up to tremendous legal jeopardy.
Besides possibly knowing about the harmful effects and not acting quickly enough, the company is also vulnerable to huge settlements because the injuries - cardiovascular problems and stroke - are debilitating and costly, said Mr. Cohen, the president for the D.C. branch of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.
"One hundred million people have used Vioxx and therefore the potential for claimants is monumental," he said. "You also have users of Vioxx that are not injured now but may need to get monitored."
A law firm in Oklahoma City, Federman & Sherwood, said it had filed the first lawsuit subsequent to Merck's recall of the drug. Within hours of the recall announcement, lawyer Barry Slotnick of New York announced plans to file an unspecified number of federal lawsuits on behalf of Vioxx users.
"It's a disaster for Merck, coming at the worst time," said health care analyst Hemant Shah of HKS & Co. in Warren, N.J.
Merck said patients with leftover pills can mail them back to the company for a refund. Vioxx is costly, with a 30-day supply costing about $100, far more than generic pain relievers.
Vioxx was the 20th-best-selling drug in the United States last year. But sales dipped 18 percent in the second quarter of this year to $653 million, partly because of increasing concerns about the drug's safety.
•Staff writer Marguerite Higgins contributed to this report.
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Official: Iraq veterans face long-lasting mental health issues
Knight Ridder Newspapers
By ALISON YOUNG
Oct 01, 2004
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/9783482.htm
WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi said Tuesday that the violent guerrilla tactics used by insurgents in Iraq will take a considerable toll on the mental health of troops, resulting in a lifetime of disability payments for many of those who return from war.
So far 20 percent of returning Iraq veterans who've sought VA care have done so for mental health issues. While the exact cost of compensating those injured in the Iraq war is uncertain, the VA already expects to pay $600 billion over the next three decades in disability payments to veterans of earlier wars.
Principi said the VA is readying itself for an influx of veterans with mental illnesses and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
"This type of war - insurgency warfare - where you don't know whether you're going to be the next victim of a car bomb or roadside bomb or (rocket-propelled grenade). It's like fighting in Vietnam when I was in the Mekong Delta," Principi said. "You don't know whether you're getting into an ambush with guerrillas."
Of 168,000 service members who had served in Iraq and been discharged as of July 22, 28,000 had sought medical care from the VA, according to the department's most recent statistics. Of those, about 5,400 had mental health issues and nearly one in three of those suffered from PTSD, which results from a serious traumatic event and can cause debilitating flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety and uncontrollable anger. The disorder may not show itself for years.
Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, the executive director of the VA's National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, said the insurgency's ambush tactics potentially expose a greater percentage of soldiers to the kinds of stress that causes PTSD.
"Whether you drive a truck or are medical personnel or a Special Forces person, the risks are more evenly distributed. So the likelihood of being exposed to war-zone trauma is greater," he said.
Only time will tell, he said, exactly how many veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be afflicted.
A major study of Vietnam veterans found that about 31 percent of men and 27 percent of women had suffered from PTSD at some point after returning from the war. An additional 22 percent of them had some symptoms of PTSD. Studies of veterans of other wars have found the prevalence of PTSD ranging between 8 percent and 12 percent, Friedman said.
A study published in July found that during early major combat in Iraq, the rate of depression, anxiety or PTSD was about 16 percent to 17 percent. The study found that few soldiers got treatment.
The injuries of war - whether mental or physical - have implications for the VA's systems that provide health care and compensation to the disabled.
As of Tuesday morning, 7,532 service members had been wounded in action in Iraq and 1,051 had been killed, according to Department of Defense statistics.
Principi noted that the number of troops serving in Iraq is small compared with those who served in Vietnam or World War II. But these newest veterans will add to the bill already incurred by the VA to compensate veterans disabled in previous wars.
"Our unfunded liability for the disability compensation program is $600 billion over the next 30 years," Principi said. The program, an entitlement that Congress must fund each year, provides monthly payments to compensate veterans injured in the service of their country. The payments generally last for the life of the veteran and sometimes for their spouses and children.
"Wars may be of a relatively short duration," Principi said, "but there's a lifetime of benefits that goes with them. And it's not a reason not to go to war when the war is just and is a good cause. But the fact of the matter is that policy-makers on both sides of the aisle need to understand that there is a price."
INFO. BOX:
Veterans seeking health care or disability compensation can contact the VA at 800-827-1000 or go to www.va.gov.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Activists Call for Probe Into Race Relations
Acquittal of Former Officer Sparks Request
By Bruce Schreiner
Associated Press
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63383-2004Sep30.html
LOUISVILLE, Sept. 30 -- Civil rights activists, outraged by a white police detective's acquittal in a black teenager's death, have asked congressional black leaders to look into race relations.
The activists also threatened demonstrations that would fill jail cells with protesters if the police officer, McKenzie Mattingly, successfully appeals his firing by the city's police chief.
"Louisville is a mud hole in the South when it comes to race relations," the Rev. Louis Coleman said Thursday.
The city remained calm after Mattingly was cleared Wednesday night of murder, manslaughter and reckless homicide charges by a Jefferson County Circuit Court jury consisting of 10 whites and two blacks.
Mattingly, 31, shot 19-year-old Michael Newby three times in the back on Jan. 3 when an undercover drug bust went awry. Newby was the seventh black man killed by Louisville police since 1998. Mattingly was the first officer to be criminally charged in any of the shootings.
Mattingly family spokesman Lukas Dwelly said the verdict was welcomed by many who had sympathy for the former officer. Dwelly started a Web site to raise money and support for Mattingly.
"This community has to stick behind its police officers and enforce the law," Dwelly said. "Society has created a need for the police officers of the world to go out and fight the drug problem."
Mayor Jerry E. Abramson urged residents to remain calm.
"You may be disappointed or you may be supportive of the decision, but additional violence will accomplish nothing," he said. "This incident was handled by the book in terms of the criminal justice process."
Activists said they were not surprised by the verdict, but said it demonstrated that the justice system is not colorblind in the city. They accused prosecutors of a halfhearted effort in the case.
The Justice Resource Center, a civil rights group headed by Coleman, prepared a letter for the Congressional Black Caucus requesting hearings delving into race relations in Louisville.
The letter cites the deaths of Newby and James Taylor, a handcuffed black man who was shot 11 times by a city police detective in 2002. Police claimed Taylor lunged at two officers with a box-cutter knife.
The letter states that "racism and classism" are "interwoven in the fabric of everyday life."
"People need to know what type of justice really is going on in this city, and it's been going on for a long time," Coleman said.
Activists scheduled a downtown march Sunday to protest the verdict.
Dwelly expressed sympathy for Newby's mother and said he realized the verdict provoked anger among some. But he said protesters should redirect their efforts "to keep drugs out of people's hands."
Meanwhile, Louisville Police Chief Robert White said he stood by his decision to fire Mattingly in April after the officer was indicted.
Mattingly has appealed his firing to the police merit board, which could overturn the decision. Abramson said the city will defend the police chief's decision "as aggressively as we can."
Mattie Jones, a civil rights activist, said any decision to reinstate Mattingly should spark protests that would "fill up the doggone jail."
"Whatever it costs us, we don't mind that, because we're sick and tired of our children dying in the streets," she said.
--------
Navy pulls plug on Project ELF
Associated Press
Fri, Oct. 01, 2004
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/9805351.htm
CLAM LAKE, Wis. - This time protesters brought a cake to celebrate - and no one was arrested.
Instead of demonstrating against the U.S. Navy's submarine communication transmitters in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, opponents gathered Thursday to mark its official end - when the Navy pulled the plug on Project ELF.
The extremely low frequency radio transmitter in the Chequamegon National Forest near Clam Lake has been the site of repeated demonstrations by anti-nuclear weapons activists.
About 25 were at the site Thursday, some with hand-held meters to monitor whether electrical current was going through the lines, said Tim Ward, a civilian technical director at the transmitter.
The cake was decorated as a forest, with pretzels lying flat to symbolize toppled poles and licorice for downed cables.
"They seemed satisfied that we are shut down," Ward said Thursday afternoon.
But Steven Davis, a spokesman for the Navy's Space and Navy Warfare Systems Command in San Diego, would confirm only that the system would be down by midnight Thursday night, saying the secrecy about the time was for operational security.
The Navy also was shutting down a similar transmitter in Michigan's Escanaba State Forest near Republic.
The Navy used the ELF system to maintain secure communications with submarines at sea, allowing the vessels to receive messages without surfacing because the radio waves penetrated into deep waters. Developed during the Cold War, the $400 million Project ELF was proposed as a way for missile-packed submarines to stay hidden and undetected, giving the United States an edge over the Soviet Union.
All communications with submarines will now be done with 12 "very low frequency" transmitters located worldwide, Davis said.
Thursday's shutdown involved little more than turning off a switch and ceasing the transmission across miles of antenna strung atop poles in the forest, he said.
Ward said the shutdown was historic because the communications system has been on line continually since 1989, shutting down only for short periods for maintenance.
Protesters at the Clam Lake site needed to be there Thursday, said organizer Mike Miles of Luck, a frequent protester whose first arrest for trespassing happened in 1984.
"We've been working toward this moment for too many years to let it slip by unannounced," said Miles, a Green Party candidate for the U.S. House in the Nov. 2 election.
It cost the Navy $13 million a year to operate both transmitters, Davis said. The exact costs for dismantling the sites, a process that could take up to three years, have not been determined.
The Navy will work with the U.S. Forest Service and Michigan Department of Natural Resources on the final closures of the sites, dealing with issues like National Historical Preservation Act requirements, environmental assessments and land disposition, Davis said.
ON THE NET
Navy: http://www.navy.mil/
--------
As I Lay Crying
On feeling what no patriotic American is supposed to feel
antiwar.com
October 1, 2004
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/whitehurst.php?articleid=3682
"I was at a rap concert the other night," said a 17-year-old neighbor last night. "And they were saying all kinds of crazy things, like 'Bush is a baby-killer.'" He rolled his eyes and laughed.
I asked him, "Well the truth is that children and infants have been killed this very week - did you not see the photos of those kids who've been killed by U.S. air strikes over the last few days?"
"No," he said, shaking his head vigorously, "that's not true. Or if it was true, it wasn't intentional."
"But still they are dead, aren't they?" I asked.
"Yes, but for a good cause - to bring democracy. But Bush certainly hasn't killed any babies! I mean, come on!"
I asked, "Is it killing only when we do it by our own hand, or is it killing also when we order it? Is it killing when we set the forces in motion so that other people are doing the killing?"
"No, you can't believe those things. I mean people have told me it's just a bunch of terrorists over there causing the problem. Bush is trying to bring democracy to Iraq. People get killed - it's just part of war. Nobody's to blame, it's just part of the process."
"So if it's an accident, it isn't really killing?"
"It's not the same," he said, "as the insurgents and the way they kill. We're just trying to kill the rebels, and we don't target civilians. They do. Anyway, foreign forces are making most of the trouble and taking hostages, all that stuff. It's not the Iraqis who are fighting our troops; I read it on a blog from Iraq, and I know a lot of guys in the Marines, so I know it's true."
I read it on a blog, so I know it's true. The U.S. would never kill innocent people intentionally. It isn't killing when you don't target the civilians - it's just a part of war. Photos of babies and children supposedly killed by allied forces should not be believed. Or, if one does believe the pictures, one must understand that somebody else killed them because the U.S. would never do that. And if it did do that, it wasn't intentional. It was an accident. It was war. Just a part of war. We have to understand that. Nobody's to blame. I read it on a blog....
He is so young. Untouched, protected, "from a good family." He prides himself on his resolve, on his confidence that every death will be worth it if we "finish what we came to do." He is so trusting, it hurts to look at his eyes as he says these things. Perhaps I remember too much from the Vietnam days, when friends came home without limbs or in a box with a nice memorial service and salutes and honors and then nothing ... nothing.
Maybe it's my hypersensitivity, or simply the fact that I'm a woman - even worse, a mother - who can't seem to see things objectively, or understand that some kids simply have to die that others may be liberated, or freed from the threat of terrorism, the way a man can.
Or maybe it's Jesus whispering in my ear that's causing all the trouble, leading to these unpleasant rumblings of conscience and pain. Doubtless I'd be far better off (not to mention more popular) listening to Rush Limbaugh or Donald Rumsfeld or Pat Robertson or George Bush or Scott McClellan (another young untested one with trusting eyes).
A contented lack of concern about matters that are so very far away and thus should not concern me (except insofar as they keep me safe from bombings and wars) is the way I should, as a patriotic American, see things. This is what I've learned on every cable TV news and talk show - Have faith, war is the answer.
Even now, when I read that the U.S. and their Iraqi proxies are preparing for "decisive action" against the "insurgents," I should not worry about the frantic families who will die in the process. More babies, children, women, the disabled, the old people, and all the peace-loving Iraqi males that we are told do not exist will perish ... but I should not think of these things.
I should be more patriotic. I should clamp down on my imagination. I should not see what is about to happen, nor what has already happened, to my brothers and sisters in Iraq. I should not weep for the victims who are even now breathing, laughing, getting a midnight snack, sleeping, playing with grandma, all the while not knowing that their days - or their hours - are numbered.
As I lay crying....
I know that I have not been "all that I can be" as an American. Even as a Christian, I am aware that I am a disappointment to those who have adjusted Christianity's less popular elements to fit the doctrine of eternal war - war conducted by the people and for the people, killings that are done only by accident and for the very best of reasons.
Headline after headline reassures me: the U.S. military command targets only the "militants," the "insurgents," the "terrorists." If anyone else dies in those bombing runs, those midnight raids, those "returns of fire," there is no need for sorrow, nor for guilt. It was not intentional. It was blameless.
Truly, I do not doubt this. I have full confidence that civilian killings will not be intentional when the clampdown comes in October. It's just that I wonder if not being intentional is the same thing as not being accountable. I wonder if not targeting a family is the same thing as being blameless when its members perish.
I wonder, in my moments of weakness, if a child killed by a bomb not intended for her is any less dead.
But such questions are unpatriotic, aren't they?
Yes. These questions betray a lack of resolve, a lack of follow-through, a lack of "doing what we came to do," a lack of faith in war.
My grief, whenever I see the carnage that this war has left behind - car bombs, beheadings, dead toddlers with blood oozing from their nostrils - is evidence enough that I am no longer measuring up to the new revised Christianity that has corrected Jesus' teachings. The new Political Christianity teaches that wars and assassinations and accidental killings are to be tolerated or even admired, as long as they're for a good cause.
You may wonder why I say all this. It is not the popular thing to say. As an evangelical Christian, I am told by the men pounding on their Bibles and pointing their fingers at their studio audiences that I should vote for Bush. Yet I see the children in my dreams, the children and all the "family values" promoted with such fervor in this country that will be washed with their blood into the Iraqi soil.
But tomorrow I will drink an extra cup of coffee and square my shoulders and try to forget that on this night I lay crying.
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