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NUCLEAR
EU takes action against Britain over nuclear waste
Taiwan Conducted Plutonium Experiments
UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program
EU takes action against Britain over nuclear waste
European nations to offer nuke incentives
U.S. investigates Iraq nuclear theft
U.S. to Look into "Vanished" Iraqi Nuclear Gear
Iraq says nuclear sites now fully protected
U.S., EU Differ on Whether to Permanently Cancel North Korean Nuclear
Terror beyond terrorism
Permanent U.N. Body Needed to Seek WMD, Panel Says
Exhibit Pays Tribute to Atom Bomb Workers
Duke Power has no plans to dismantle controversial MOX program
Tennessee Uranium Fuel Project Receives Third and Final Approval
Congress Approves Nuclear Waste Reclassification Plan
YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT: Money request approved
Group admits violating state open-meeting law
Court refuses to delay radiation ruling
MILITARY
15 Afghan Candidates to File Vote Complaints With Panel
'Growing threat' of bio-attack on coalition in Iraq
Blair Apologizes Over Iraq;
Boeing Competitors Protest
Chinese information warfare threatens Taiwan
Bomb Blasts and Suicide Attack Kill 6 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Insurgent Alliance Is Fraying In Fallujah
Allawi Threatens Military Action
Radical Sunni, Shi'ite groups help free U.S. photographer
Official: 2 Attempts Made to Rescue Hostages
Arafat Relative Unhurt in Gaza Car Bombing
Israel Seizes Hamas Leader Accused of Organizing Attacks
Sectarian Tensions Simmer in Lebanon
Rumsfeld To Appeal For NATO Aid in Iraq Training
NATO Agrees to Deploy 300 Trainers to Iraq
Ex-U.S. Detainee Now Leading Kidnappers
Chechen terrorists probed
A Bosnian Serb Leader Faces War-Crimes Court
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Justices Agree To Hear 2 Cases On Display of Commandments
Top court to consider Commandments cases
Man Guilty in Case of Terror Ties
Court to Hear Pleas On Executing Juveniles
Cyber-Security to Get Higher-Profile Leader
Dayton Closes Senate Office, Cites Threats
Airport Security Screeners Overworked, Report Says
Internal Report Targets Port Security Work
Officials say schools not affected by scare
Phoenix targets alien smugglers
Father Denounces Hamdi's Imprisonment
POLITICS
How Tax Bill Gave Business More and More
Bush's Health Care Ads Not Entirely Accurate
The Role of Radio Sawa In Mideast Questioned
Bush Policy Gets a Ride on the House
John Kerry and the Democrats' Project for a New American Century
ENERGY
Unions, Environmentalists Like Clean Energy's Economic Potential
Hydrogen Economy Far From Reality
OTHER
Census Says Impasse Over Funds Threatens Survey
ACTIVISTS
Whistleblowers Ignored, Investigations on the Wane
MARY KELLY TOOK AN AXE AND STRUCK A BLOW FOR JUSTICE
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
EU takes action against Britain over nuclear waste
Reuters
13 Oct 2004
By Peter Nielsen and Jeff Mason
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13509614.htm
BRUSSELS, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Britain faces legal action from the European Commission over its failure to notify Brussels over how it disposes of radioactive waste at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, home to its nuclear weapons industry.
The European Union executive said on Wednesday the UK Environment Agency had failed to notify it of an authorisation granted in 2000 for the disposal of nuclear waste from AWE.
AWE employs around 3,600 people at its two sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in southern England. AWE is critical to Britain's nuclear deterrent as it designs, builds, maintains and disposes of nuclear warheads.
Under EU rules, governments must inform the Commission in advance if it wants to grant authorisation for radioactive waste disposal so that it can assess the risks to health in neighbouring countries.
"In fact no data were submitted to the Commission, neither in the course of the licensing procedure nor after its closure," the European Union executive said in a statement.
The Commission has sent a so-called reasoned opinion to London, the final step in an infringement procedure before it files suit at the European Court of Justice.
"We are in disagreement with the Commission but it would be inappropriate for us to argue the issues in public when this case is likely to come before the European Court of Justice," said a spokesman for the UK Ministry of Defence.
He said the UK did not accept that the Euratom treaty -- which governs the use of nuclear energy in the EU and which the Commission sited in its decision -- covers defence activities.
"The ministry of defence abides by international accepted safety and environmental standards as published by bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Commission for Radiological Protection," the UK spokesman said.
The Euratom treaty aims to promote the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
The Commission is also on Britain's case in two other nuclear cases.
In October 2003 the Commission took Britain to court for breaking EU rules on radioactive waste from a dockyard that refits and refuels nuclear submarines.The Devonport dockyards, run by Devonport Management Limited, are owned by KBR, a division of U.S. engineering and construction firm Halliburton <HAL.N>.
Last month the Commission also said it would drag Britain to court for failing to grant EU inspectors full access to part of its Sellafield nuclear site so they could account for highly-radioactive materials.
(additional reporting by Margaret Orgill in London)
-------- china
Taiwan Conducted Plutonium Experiments
U.N. Agency Says Taiwan Conducted Plutonium Separation Experiments Up to the Mid 1980s
The Associated Press
Oct. 13, 2004
http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=161918
VIENNA, Austria - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has found that Taiwan's experiments with plutonium extended up to the mid-1980s, diplomats said Wednesday, uncovering a key detail about the country's now-abandoned nuclear weapons program.
It had been known that Taiwan briefly revived its nuclear weapons research program in the 1980s, and the revelations confirm suspicions that plutonium separation experiments were carried out at that time.
Taiwan first launched its nuclear weapons program in the 1960s, but suspended in the following decade under pressure from the United States, which apparently feared the response from Taiwan's rival China.
Taiwan's governent has never acknowledged having a secret weapons program, according to analysts.
The experiments were uncovered in inspections and testing conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency after the Taiwanese government agreed to voluntary extra controls on the country's peaceful nuclear program, the diplomats said.
The diplomats told The Associated Press that their information was based on preliminary samples taken in Taiwan by IAEA inspectors indicating that plutonium separation experiments probably continued until about 20 years ago.
The diplomats, who are familiar with the IAEA, spoke on condition of anonymity. Officials at the Vienna-based IAEA said they would not comment.
One of the diplomats cautioned against drawing parallels between Taiwan and South Korea, whose government recently acknowledged that its scientists once dabbled in extracting plutonium and enriching uranium both of which can be used to make nuclear arms.
While the South Korean revelations reflected continued secret weapons-related research, it was common knowledge that Taiwan had engaged in nuclear weapons research after China exploded its first bomb in the 1960s, the diplomat said.
What the agency now was trying to do was to flesh out details of the Taiwanese program, with environmental sampling and other methods, he said.
The agency was not expecting to find new experiments with possible weapons applications beyond the mid-1980s, said the diplomat. "But there will be new things they did not discover in the past" about the previously known program because of the extra access Taiwan was now granting agency inspectors, he said.
In Taipei, Taiwan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Michel Lu said that ministry was not aware of the reports and would not immediately comment on them. Officials at Taiwan's Atomic Energy Council were not available after business hours Wednesday.
Andrew Yang, a defense analyst at the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a Taipei think tank, said that it has long been common knowledge in Taiwan that the island's nuclear scientists were working on a bomb in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yang said the work was done at the Chung Shan Institute, the military's biggest research center. He said the government has yet to publicly confirm the project existed.
"I don't think they got anywhere close to building a nuclear device," Yang said. "But they did have the technology and the know-how."
The program was shut down and U.S. officials sealed off the laboratories and test sites in 1988 shortly after a military officer involved in the project, Chang Hsien-yi, defected to the United States with computer information about the program.
Taiwan's nuclear weapons program has been the subject of numerous media reports and books.
Jay Taylor, a former Asia specialist in the U.S. Foreign Service, wrote in his biography of the late Taiwanese President Chiang Ching-kuo, who took overall responsibility for the secret nuclear project, that the CIA recruited Chang to gather information about the program.
The project was approved by the late President Chiang Kai-shek, Ching-kuo's father. The elder Chiang in 1965 ordered that the nuclear bomb study move from research to development, the book said.
The CIA estimated in 1974 that Taiwan would be ready to build a nuclear weapon in "five years or so," according to Taylor's book, "The Generalissimo's Son," published in 2000.
In 1976, IAEA inspectors found that 10 barrels of used fuel containing about 1 pound of plutonium were missing.
The Washington Post cited official U.S. sources in an Aug. 29, 1976, report that said Taiwan had been secretly reprocessing for some time and had been producing plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The same article said that Washington demanded Chiang Ching-kuo dismantle the reprocessing facility and ship back related equipment to the United States.
Chiang accepted the U.S. demands and asserted that Taiwan had no intention to develop nuclear weapons. He issued a statement on Jan. 23, 1977, supporting President Jimmy Carter's call for a total ban on nuclear testing.
Taylor writes that "privately, Ching-kuo ordered the reprocessing program put on hold for the time being but for research work to continue."
Associated Press Reporter Bill Foreman in Taipei contributed to this story.
On the Net: www.iaea.org
-------- depleted uranium
UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program
Five admirals, Carlyle Group and Rand take over - Part 5
10/13/04
sfbayview.com
by Leuren Moret
http://www.sfbayview.com/101304/nuclearweapons101304.shtml
Our children: uranium meat
How was the truth about depleted uranium covered up and hidden from the American people? The same way Agent Orange was hidden for decades from Vietnam veterans and the public.
As Henry Kissinger said, "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." The health impact of exposure to depleted uranium, known as Gulf War Syndrome, has been covered up under three presidents beginning in 1991, with former President George Bush. Establishment doctors and scientists helped with the cover-up.
Dr. Joyce Lashof, appointed by President Clinton as chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses (1995-1997), is a medical doctor and former dean of the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. As a member of the faculty at the university that has managed the nuclear weapons labs for 61 years for the U.S. goverment, she had access to the best information on the health effects of depleted uranium.
After all, the nuclear weapons labs are mandated to spend 5 percent of their budgets on research concerning the biological effects of radiation. Annual lab budgets at each facility are over $1 billion.
Sandia Labs, now owned by Lockheed, of which 70 percent is owned by Carlyle, has been studying mitochondrial damage from DU exposure in Gulf War vets. Higher rates of mitochondrial related diseases - Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's (ALS) and Hodgkin's disease - have been reported in Air Force and Army Gulf-era veterans. Despite the fact that a nuclear weapons lab found a link between DU exposure in Gulf War veterans and these diseases, Lashof categorically stated that "everyone" gets Lou Gehrig's disease:
"We heard veterans describe their diagnosis that we know happened to the general population. I mean, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a disease that happens to people ... Lou Gehrig's disease. And there is a veteran who has that. He feels it's due to his service in the Gulf. We don't know the cause of Lou Gehrig's disease, but we know it happens to lots of people who didn't go to the Gulf" (from "Update: Gulf War Syndrome," interview with Greg Krause, ONLINE NewsHour, Jan. 7, 1997, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/gulf_1-7.html).
When asked during an interview on PBS what her findings were, after complaints from veterans resulted in her appointment by presidential order as chair of the investigative committee, Dr. Lashof stated in 1997: "Well, we were critical of the Pentagon in one area and one area only. And I think it's important to emphasize that the government has done a very good job of setting up physical examinations, of treating veterans as they come in, of launching a whole series of studies that should give us the kinds of answers we're looking for. But the one area that we did fault them in was that they did not take very seriously the need to determine whether or not there were releases of chemical agents during - not only during the war but rather after the war as well and, indeed, whether people were exposed to these agents" (same source).
Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported the astounding news to the American Free Press that as of August 2004, "Gulf-era veterans" now on medical disability number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.
A Gulf War I medical doctor reported that in a unit of 20 soldiers who served in Iraq in 2003, eight have malignancies just 16 months later. These 2003 soldiers were not exposed to chemicals or bioagents, but they were exposed to DU at levels many times more than in Gulf War I. And the Gulf-era veterans have been treated just as Vietnam veterans were - they've been ignored. Almost none have been able to get medical care.
Dr. Joyce Lashof also downplayed birth defects in post-Gulf war babies reported in Gulf-era veterans. She said: "It was heart-rending to sit and listen to the woman with a child with a congenital defect. She feels it's due to service in the Gulf. I think it's completely understandable, but it's just not valid. Birth defects are very common. About 3 percent of births have some type of congenital defect. The initial studies we have show no greater frequency of birth defects among those children born to veterans who were in the Gulf, either women veterans or men" (same source).
A 1995 Life photo-essay, "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm" (see below), focused on the numerous cases of severe birth defects that had occurred in families of veterans from that war. It reported, "Of the 400 sick vets who had already answered (Don Riegle's Senate Banking) Committee inquiries, a startling 65 percent reported birth defects or immune-system problems in children conceived after the war." Post-war babies in that 65 percent have been born with severe births defects - some with missing brains, no eyes, missing organs or fingers, and blood diseases.
"The legacy of the Gulf War should be a recognition by all Americans that the government acknowledges and honors its obligation to care for Gulf War Veterans, not the perception the government cannot be trusted to candidly address their health concerns" (from "Clinton announces new money for Gulf War Syndrome Research," CNN, Nov. 19, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/US/9711/08/gulf.war.illness/).
The report produced by the presidential committee chaired by Dr. Joyce Lashof was another government whitewash by all too willing scientific and medical prostitutes. And Clinton's administration was the second presidential cover-up of depleted uranium, which was used in Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999 under President Clinton's orders.
References
Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam" (1990) p. 97, citing "The Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein (Simon and Schuster 1976).
"Update: Gulf War Syndrome," interview with Greg Krause, ONLINE NewsHour, Jan. 7, 1997, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/gulf_1-7.html.
"Clinton announces new money for Gulf War Syndrome Research," CNN, Nov. 19, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/US/9711/08/gulf.war.illness/.
Birth defects: "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm," Life photo-essay (1995), http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf08.html.
-------- europe
EU takes action against Britain over nuclear waste
(Reuters)
13 Oct 2004
By Peter Nielsen and Jeff Mason
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13509614.htm
BRUSSELS, Oct 13 - Britain faces legal action from the European Commission over its failure to notify Brussels over how it disposes of radioactive waste at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, home to its nuclear weapons industry.
The European Union executive said on Wednesday the UK Environment Agency had failed to notify it of an authorisation granted in 2000 for the disposal of nuclear waste from AWE.
AWE employs around 3,600 people at its two sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in southern England. AWE is critical to Britain's nuclear deterrent as it designs, builds, maintains and disposes of nuclear warheads.
Under EU rules, governments must inform the Commission in advance if it wants to grant authorisation for radioactive waste disposal so that it can assess the risks to health in neighbouring countries.
"In fact no data were submitted to the Commission, neither in the course of the licensing procedure nor after its closure," the European Union executive said in a statement.
The Commission has sent a so-called reasoned opinion to London, the final step in an infringement procedure before it files suit at the European Court of Justice.
"We are in disagreement with the Commission but it would be inappropriate for us to argue the issues in public when this case is likely to come before the European Court of Justice," said a spokesman for the UK Ministry of Defence.
He said the UK did not accept that the Euratom treaty -- which governs the use of nuclear energy in the EU and which the Commission sited in its decision -- covers defence activities.
"The ministry of defence abides by international accepted safety and environmental standards as published by bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Commission for Radiological Protection," the UK spokesman said.
The Euratom treaty aims to promote the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
The Commission is also on Britain's case in two other nuclear cases.
In October 2003 the Commission took Britain to court for breaking EU rules on radioactive waste from a dockyard that refits and refuels nuclear submarines.The Devonport dockyards, run by Devonport Management Limited, are owned by KBR, a division of U.S. engineering and construction firm Halliburton <HAL.N>.
Last month the Commission also said it would drag Britain to court for failing to grant EU inspectors full access to part of its Sellafield nuclear site so they could account for highly-radioactive materials.
-------- iran
European nations to offer nuke incentives
October 13, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041012-101452-5726r.htm
The Bush administration said yesterday it is open to European incentives for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment - a key to producing nuclear weapons - but it will not offer any U.S. benefits to Tehran.
Britain, Germany and France are to present a benefits package at a meeting of officials from the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries at the State Department on Friday, spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"We'll hear what they've put together. We'll hear them out and talk together with them about how to move Iran into compliance" with the requirements of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr. Boucher said.
The discussions on a package of incentives are a last-ditch effort to persuade Iran to abandon its uranium-enrichment activities before a crucial November meeting of the IAEA board of governors, U.S. and foreign diplomats said.
If Tehran does not comply, it most likely will be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Mr. Boucher, who would not use the word "incentives," dismissed suggestions that the administration is compromising its own policy of no deal-making with "axis of evil" countries - Iran, North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
"What we are doing now is to examine how to get Iran to meet [the IAEA] requirements," he said.
At the same time, he said, the United States will continue to insist that the matter be referred to the Security Council, even if Tehran accepts the European offer.
"Its past behavior merits referral" to the council, Mr. Boucher said.
A senior State Department official said: "We are not going to make any new offers."
The European Union decided on Monday to prepare a package of "carrots and sticks."
"They have always made clear that there are certain aspects, certain benefits in the EU relationship with Iran that wouldn't happen without Iranian compliance," Mr. Boucher said.
The senior State Department official said those benefits would include lifting some EU economic penalties and opening of trade opportunities.
Russia, which will be represented at the Friday meeting, is expected to provide nuclear fuel for Iran's civilian reactor in Bushehr, the official said.
The U.S. team at the meeting will be led by John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and Glyn Davies, deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs.
The Group of Eight also includes Italy, Japan and Canada.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said yesterday that the EU cannot force Iran to give up its right to enrich uranium.
"It is wrong for them to think they can, through negotiations, force Iran to stop enrichment," he told a conference in Tehran. "Iran will never give up its right to enrichment."
Iran's nuclear program has become a presidential campaign issue, with Sen. John Kerry, President Bush's Democratic challenger, accusing him of not being involved enough with the Europeans in resolving the matter.
The Friday meeting could help Mr. Bush counter Mr. Kerry's charges. It also could upset some of the president's conservative supporters if it is perceived as a softening of the U.S. stance toward the Islamic republic.
U.S. differences with Iran go beyond suspicions it is attempting to make nuclear weapons. It is on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The Washington Times reported in yesterday's editions that Iran is attempting to influence fellow Shi'ite Muslims concentrated in southern Iraq by sending weapons, money and suicide bombers.
The Times also quoted a leading Iranian dissident in Paris as saying Iran is infiltrating hundreds of Shi'ite clerics into southern Iraq ahead of January elections in an attempt to set up a sister fundamentalist Islamic republic.
-------- iraq / inspections
U.S. investigates Iraq nuclear theft
October 13, 2004
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041013-122137-3321r.htm
NEW YORK - U.S. officials yesterday said they would look into a report that radioactive material and sophisticated equipment had disappeared from Iraq's nuclear power and research facilities, but expressed confidence that such dangerous materials are now secure.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Mohamed El Baradei the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned that whole buildings had suffered "systematic dismantlement" and that sensitive equipment previously subject to U.N. verification and monitoring had disappeared.
U.S. officials at the United Nations and the State Department said Washington would investigate the charges, but expressed no urgency.
"I think we share the general concern that some material might have gotten out into the market immediately after the war," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.
"But to the extent that all of us have been able to bring it under control, we have done that, and we have been able to - I think the Iraqis have been able to put in place the kind of monitoring safeguards and control systems that are necessary to prevent any further leakage."
At the United Nations yesterday, Deputy U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson told reporters: "Obviously, we'll do a full investigation, working with the Iraqis."
But other U.S. officials seemed eager to play down the two-page letter, saying they had not seen it before yesterday.
The IAEA concerns surfaced only three weeks before the U.S. presidential election, in which the Iraq invasion and its justification have become issues.
In a long-awaited report to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Charles A. Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that U.N.-imposed sanctions had been close to crumbling before the war and that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had wanted to re-create his illicit weapons capability once they did.
"Saddam sought to sustain the requisite knowledge base to restart the program eventually," Mr. Duelfer reported. In the interim, he said, the regime wanted to keep "the inherent capability to produce such weapons as circumstances permitted in the future."
The specter of an Iraqi nuclear-weapons program was a primary justification given for the 2003 war. Although no weapons were found, poorly secured power plants, storage facilities and research compounds were looted and vandalized in the postwar security vacuum.
Radiation levels among Iraqis living near the sprawling Tuwaitha nuclear facility south of Baghdad spiked shortly after the invasion, with equipment and supplies from the facility turning up in people's homes.
In the past year, the IAEA has located plainly tagged nuclear equipment in shipments intercepted in the Rotterdam, Netherlands, port and abandoned in junk heaps in Jordan.
The IAEA repeatedly has called on governments to police their ports and borders for Iraqi contraband and to report leads to the agency. There is no confirmation that any of the missing dual-use equipment - such as electron beam welders and milling and turning machines have landed in countries with covert-weapons programs.
Mr. Boucher stressed yesterday that Washington is working with the interim Iraqi government on nuclear security, but that it's up to Baghdad to take the lead.
"We're very supportive of the Iraqi government," he told reporters. "We work with them on export control; we work with them on border control; we work with them in supporting their efforts, helping them define the mission; and obviously, we work with them in helping with security at facilities. But they have the lead on this one."
In Baghdad, Iraq's minister of science and technology said the IAEA inspectors were welcome to return to Iraq whenever they want.
"We are happy for the IAEA or any other organization to come and inspect," Rashad Mandan Omar told Reuters news agency.
Inspectors have been back to Iraq twice since the March 2003 invasion, both times under severe restrictions on their mandate and mobility.
The Bush administration has informed the IAEA that it has transferred to the United States nearly two tons of enriched uranium and 1,000 highly radioactive items.
Based on satellite imagery and other "open-source" information, the IAEA letter implies that authorities in Washington and Baghdad did not realize that the theft was occurring.
"Pursuant to the ongoing monitoring and verification plan, Iraq is obliged to declare semi-annually changes that have occurred or are foreseen at sites deemed relevant by the agency," wrote Mr. ElBaradei in the letter.
"The agency has received no such notifications or declarations from any state since the agency's inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in March 2003."
The letter is unlikely to do anything to improve relations between Washington and Mr. ElBaradei, who is seeking a third term at the helm of IAEA over U.S. objections.
--------
U.S. to Look into "Vanished" Iraqi Nuclear Gear
October 13, 2004
By Irwin Arieff,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=178
UNITED NATIONS - The United States will investigate a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency that equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear arms have vanished from Iraq, a U.S. diplomat said Tuesday.
In Baghdad, a government minister said U.N. nuclear inspectors - barred from Iraq by Washington during the U.S. occupation, which officially ended in June - would be welcome to return if they wanted to check for the missing equipment and materials.
"Obviously we'll do a full investigation, working with the Iraqis," U.S. Deputy Ambassador Anne Patterson told reporters at the United Nations when asked about the report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA, relying on satellite imagery, said entire buildings in Iraq that once housed high-precision equipment that could help a government or terror group make nuclear bombs had been dismantled since the March 2003 war on Iraq.
Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also had been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.
Released three weeks ahead of the U.S. presidential election, the report could fuel criticism of President Bush, whose campaign has focused heavily on the dangers of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.
Monitoring Stopped Before War
The equipment, including high-precision milling and turning machines and electron-beam welders, and materials, such as high-strength aluminum, were tagged by the IAEA years ago as part of the watchdog agency's shutdown of Iraq's nuclear program following the first Gulf War.
U.N. inspectors then monitored the sites - due to their "proliferation significance" - until their evacuation from Iraq just before the 2003 war.
The IAEA said neither Baghdad nor Washington appeared to have noticed the disappearance of the equipment and materials.
In Baghdad, Iraqi Science and Technology Minister Rashad Omar said the interim government favored transparency.
"We are happy for the IAEA or any other organization to come and inspect," he said.
In Vienna, Western diplomats said the IAEA was worried the U.S.-led war, aimed at disarming Iraq, may have unleashed a proliferation crisis if looters have sold equipment that could be used to make atomic weapons.
"If some of this stuff were to end up in Iran, some people would be very concerned," a diplomat close to the IAEA said. "The IAEA's big concern would be profiteering, people who would sell this stuff with no regard for who is buying it," the diplomat said, adding that the profiteers could have sold the items on to groups or countries interested in weapons.
In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose government took part in the war and the later occupation, said he believed most of the removal of materials and equipment took place in the chaos that reigned shortly after the invasion.
"It is not clear, but it appears, and I'm seeking more details after receipt of the IAEA report overnight, that most of the unauthorized removal took place in the immediate aftermath of the major conflict in March and April last year," Straw told parliament.
U.S. officials charged the report had been given to the media before Washington had a chance to see it. But U.N. officials said it had been sent last week to Security Council members, including the United States.
Prewar U.S. allegations that Saddam had revived his atomic weapons program from the early 1990s have never been proven.
But the IAEA has warned countries to keep a close eye on all their nuclear sites due to multiple warnings from Western intelligence agencies that terrorist organizations are interested in getting their hands on a nuclear device.
Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Vienna and Luke Baker in Baghdad
--------
Iraq says nuclear sites now fully protected
(AFP)
Oct 13, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041013/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_nuclear_041013123447
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said all nuclear sites are now fully protected after lapses in security during the early days of the US-led occupation.
"Since the transfer of power and the passage of certain sites to the responsibility of our ministry, all sites are protected," said Mohammad Jawad al-Shareh, director-general of the ministry of science and technology.
Shareh said in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in March 2003 "people snuck in and took some equipment and material," but that the situation had improved since the country regained its sovereignty at the end of June.
In an October 1 letter to the UN Security Council, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he was concerned that material and equipment, in some cases entire buildings housing sophisticated technology, are disappearing from Iraq (news - web sites).
The State Department acknowledged Tuesday that such items had been looted from Iraqi facilities after the invasion but maintained that "most, if not all," had been accounted for and that Iraqi authorities had acted to prevent further thefts.
An IAEA team visited Iraq two months ago to inspect sites, Shareh said, adding the agency had put equipment under seal and the government transferred the materials to heavily- guarded locations.
"We have asked the IAEA to furnish us with the list of equipment they recorded in 2003 so we can compare what we have with what existed before the war," he said.
Shareh said the ministry had asked the IAEA to help it decontaminate nuclear sites, including Tuwaitha, near Baghdad, which was ransacked by looters after the war.
-------- korea
U.S., EU Differ on Whether to Permanently Cancel North Korean Nuclear Reactor Project
Reuters
Carol Giacomo
Oct. 13, 2004
The European Union supports the continued suspension of a light-water nuclear reactor project in North Korea during diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program, Yonhap news agency reported (see GSN, Oct. 13).
The United States, however, is pushing to terminate the project permanently, according to Yonhap (see GSN, May 28). It was suspended for one year nearly 11 months ago, after the United States accused North Korea of uranium-enrichment efforts (see GSN, Nov. 21, 2003).
"We don't think there is any reason to terminate it at this stage," said Dorian Prince, the EU ambassador to South Korea. "We don't want to do anything negative, and we see no reason to change our position."
He added that he believed terminating the project could have a negative influence on diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang (Kazinform.com, Oct. 14).
A South Korean official also voiced support today for a continued suspension, adding that the program should be considered for resumption if the standoff with North Korea is resolved, the Korea Times reported.
"Though the project has been stopped due to the (North's) nuclear problem, we believe it should be resumed if the six-party talks go well and produce tangible results," Foreign Affairs Minister Ban Ki-moon said (Ryu Jin, Korea Times, Oct 14).
Meanwhile, Washington is expected to move quickly following the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election to begin a new round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program, South Korea's ambassador to the United States told Reuters yesterday.
If Democrat John Kerry is elected, Ambassador Han Sung-joo said it was "quite plausible" that that the North Koreans would wait until he took office on Jan. 20 before resuming talks. He added that he believed a potential Kerry administration "will take advantage of experienced people (who worked on North Korea) during the Clinton administration ... and so they can get to work on this issue - which they consider a highly important and urgent issue - almost immediately after taking office."
Kerry has said he would continue multilateral talks but would also engage in bilateral negotiations with Pyongyang, as Clinton did.
The Bush administration has recently allowed senior U.S. envoys to hold side discussions with the North Koreans during multilateral talks, but continues an official policy of only engaging with the North in a multilateral setting.
Such contacts constitute a "dialogue" rather than "negotiation," according to Han. They have "not been terribly productive," he said.
If Bush is re-elected, Han said he did not expect much change in the U.S. policy on North Korea.
The Bush administration "wants to see a resolution of this (nuclear) issue through ... dialogue and by peaceful means and I think there will be a stepped-up effort to realize the fourth round of the six-party talks with concrete dates," Han said.
Following U.S. elections, Pyongyang could respond more favorably to recent U.S. overtures, such as repeated statements of nonhostility and allowing North Korean representatives at the United Nations to attend a conference in Washington, Han said.
"All the U.S. has to do is to continue to do what it has been doing," Han said
-------- terrorism
Terror beyond terrorism
IndyStar
Dan Carpenter
October 13, 2004
http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/185879-9716-021.html
While a presidential election may hinge on whether Americans really think George W. Bush really thought Saddam Hussein might be thinking about nuclear weapons, two nations are capable of destroying the Earth before this article goes to press.
The United States and Russia have thousands of missiles on hair-trigger alert, aimed at each other just as in Cold War days; they've already had close calls that would have been last calls, unleashing enough explosive power, heat, radiation, mega-hurricane winds and cloud cover to turn the planet into something much worse than Hiroshima.
This reality, alongside which such issues as taxes and ISTEP don't quite seem so pressing, was very much in our consciousness back in the 1980s, when an Australian doctor named Helen Caldicott was leading a young organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Though the nuclear freeze movement can take credit for helping prod governments well down the road to disarmament, cocked nuclear weapons, shaky preemptive warning systems and aging nuclear power plants remain in force. So does Caldicott.
Last weekend, the 66-year-old author and Nobel nominee addressed the fourth annual Earth Charter Summit held by Indiana supporters of the Earth Charter, a widely endorsed global manifesto of environmental protection, economic development, human rights and peace.
If the couple hundred activists in Unitarian Universalist Church needed passion and punch to rally them in this election year, Caldicott delivered. But she served food for discouragement as well.
"I am sad," she said, "at what has happened to the planet. Sad that almost all politicians are scientifically illiterate . . . Sad that this country, with so much potential not just to save the Earth but to save itself and become civilized, is going backward."
Not exempting her own country, Caldicott decried powerful nations in thrall to a military-industrial complex that profits from death at the expense of the sick and hungry. Mocking the pious hand-wringing over nations such as Iran and Iraq, which possess a negligible share of the global arsenal, she declared, "The real rogue nations in the world today are Russia and America, threatening extinction."
Caldicott, who knows more about nuclear warfare than any president, maintains that it is going on in Iraq now -- tons of depleted uranium left by coalition shelling, toxic for millennia.
"Wouldn't you say the people in charge need to be removed from office for the public health of the planet?" she cried to a round of cheers.
But she admonished that the defeat of President Bush would not fundamentally change a political culture of "corporate prostitutes" beholden to military, economic and environmental violence.
"You are providing the weapons that kill lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people," she told these liberal taxpayers. "War is good for business."
To accomplish a "second revolution" and turn away from destruction, she said, Americans must awaken spiritually.
"Why would God specifically bless one country to the exclusion of all others when only 5 percent of the world lives here? That's antithetical to what Jesus would do."
By implication, the other 95 percent depend upon how the blessed ones use their power.
"We are the curators of life on Earth," the famed physician pleaded. "We have the most profound responsibilities the human race has ever had."
Carpenter is Star op-ed columnist. Contact him at (317) 444-6172 or via e-mail at dan.carpenter@indystar.com .
-------- u.n.
Permanent U.N. Body Needed to Seek WMD, Panel Says
Global Security Newswire
By Jim Wurst
October 13, 2004
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_10_13.html#8CED411D
UNITED NATIONS - Drawing on the lessons learned from weapons inspections in Iraq, a panel of nongovernmental arms-control experts said last week that a standing U.N. investigative body for weapons of mass destruction would lend "international legitimacy" to the campaign to control unconventional arms (see GSN, Oct. 7).
It would be "in the objective interest of all governments" to have "unbiased assessments at hand" to settle disputes over any country's WMD programs, said Henrik Salander, the secretary general of the WMD Commission. Such an initiative depends on the "international legitimacy" that "can only be derived from the United Nations," he said. The WMD Commission is chaired by Hans Blix, the last U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq.
The panel was held on Thursday, the day after the release of the report by chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq Charles Duelfer, who said that inspections and sanctions in place since 1991 had prevented Iraq from reconstituting its WMD programs. Duelfer said that by the time of the 2003 war, Iraq had no nuclear weapons or infrastructure and no significant chemical or biological weapons, thus confirming the basic positions of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"If there was any doubt that this issue is important, it was put to rest by the Duelfer report," said W. Pal S. Sidhu of the International Peace Academy.
Whether Iraq "is an exception or part of a trend," he said, promoting nonproliferation or disarmament "has to result in a change of attitude in the [targeted] government."
The United Nations helped eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction "through inspections and sanctions," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, chairwoman of the chemical and biological weapons working group at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. "The success of the U.N. underlined the need for the U.N. to be prepared for when the need arises. And the need will arise, there are suspicions aplenty."
She added investigations are useful not only for inspections but also for deterrence.
Panelists said the general idea would be to have a permanent body within the United Nations that would have the expertise and authority to investigate charges that a country was engaged in illegal WMD activities. Rosenberg said this unit must be allowed "to go beyond the limits of existing treaties." The International Atomic Energy Agency can conduct inspections of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention has its own verification body, but there are no verification provisions for the Biological Weapons Convention (see GSN, April 13).
Salander outlined several scenarios under which such a body might be useful. Among them were a case such as Libya, in which a country renounces WMD ambitions "and wants it confirmed in a credible way," and a North Korean model in which there are "accusations of noncompliance" with a nonproliferation treaty.
Two related issues are how an inspection could be triggered - other than being requested by an accused country - and under whose authority the unit would be placed under: the U.N. Security Council or the General Assembly. The Security Council already has the authority to order an inspection under its mandate to maintain international peace and security. The General Assembly is more representative of the international community, thus any decision could be seen as more legitimate, but it has no enforcement powers under the U.N. Charter. This means no country would be compelled to cooperate with an investigative arm of the assembly.
Salander and Sidhu said the unit should be under the authority of the Security Council. Salander said this approach "is not without its complications," but the other options also have problems. Sidhu said since most investigations are likely "to be exceptional and unusual," requiring a flexible response. "Like it or not," he said, the council is the most flexible U.N. organ.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Exhibit Pays Tribute to Atom Bomb Workers
By CHERYL WITTENAUER
Wednesday October 13, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4547548,00.html
WELDON SPRING, Mo. (AP) - For more than a year, Denise Brock has been trying to win government compensation for workers who were exposed to high levels of radiation while helping to create the atom bomb and Cold War-era weapons.
Now Brock has her eye on another kind of recognition for their toil.
Brock is working with the Department of Energy to build an exhibit that will tell the story of more than 3,500 Missourians who worked on the U.S. atom bomb program and at Cold War-era nuclear sites in St. Louis, Weldon Spring and Hematite, Mo.
``It's bittersweet,'' said Brock, whose father died of cancer in the 1960s after working at the old Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. plant in St. Louis, which produced uranium dioxide for the atom bomb.
The tribute should be completed by year's end and will become a permanent display at the Weldon Spring Interpretive Center.
The display will include a timeline of the nuclear age, photographs, a book of workers' names, and a glass case of old badges and other plant artifacts. A replica of the St. Louis Gateway Arch will emphasize the St. Louis connection, Brock said.
The exhibit also will recognize workers at a Hematite, Mo., plant that turned uranium into fuel rods under a string of owners from Mallinckrodt in 1956 to Westinghouse Electric in 2001.
The DOE's Pam Thompson said recognizing the workers' efforts during World War II and the Cold War is just as important as the government offering them compensation and decontaminating the site where they worked.
``It's important to tell the story that we closed the circle for them,'' Thompson said.
A four-year-old federal law requires the government to compensate workers in the nuclear weapons industry, or their survivors, for job-related cancer or other diseases. Workers from about 350 sites nationwide, including 10 in Missouri, may qualify.
But critics call the system burdensome and time-consuming. Claimants must show proof of employment as well as exposure to radiation, even though records often are missing or were never kept.
Tony Windisch, who suffers from cancer, said he couldn't serve in World War II, so instead he worked on the Manhattan Project in St. Louis, helping to create the atomic bomb that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Now, as he sees his co-workers dying from multiple cancers, and their survivors struggling to get compensation, he feels betrayed by a government that he says didn't adequately protect them from radiation exposure.
``To find out at this late date, not only did they destroy (workplace) documents, but treated us as guinea pigs, that's what really angers me,'' said Windisch, 78.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- south carolina
Duke Power has no plans to dismantle controversial MOX program
PAUL NOWELL
Wed, Oct. 13, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/9904041.htm?1c
YORK, S.C. - The concrete moat under construction at Duke Power's Catawba Nuclear Power Station south of Charlotte has little to do with the utility's plans to start burning mixed-oxide fuel containing small amounts of weapons-grade plutonium next spring.
Designed to prevent everything from passenger cars to military tanks from getting too close to the reactor, the moat is part of a post-Sept 11, 2001, security upgrade under way at the plant.
Still, company officials surely wouldn't mind if the barricade also kept away angry environmental groups who claim that mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, is potentially dangerous and could make the nuclear plant a target for terrorists.
"They are still as adamant as ever," Steven Nesbit, Duke's MOX fuel project manager, said Monday when he was asked if critics have eased their condemnation of the MOX program in recent months. "If they've eased up, I haven't heard about it."
Reached Tuesday at her office, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League executive director Janet Zeller said her group remains staunchly opposed to the MOX tests.
"Our organization is dedicated to stopping Duke from endangering the people around Charlotte," she said. "Even the amount that will be shipped there for the testing is enough plutonium to make several nuclear bombs."
Zeller can't believe there isn't more of a public outcry about Duke's plans.
"They are saying, 'Trust us,' and I don't think we should," she said. "They have given no reasons to trust them and they have made the Charlotte area a greater terrorist target."
Duke plans to start testing the fuel in early 2005 at the Catawba Nuclear Power Station near York - about 30 miles south of Charlotte - and the McGuire Nuclear Power Station, 20 miles north of Charlotte near Huntersville, N.C.
The Duke plants would be the first in the United States to burn MOX, which contains a small percentage of weapons-grade plutonium. MOX made from plutonium is now used in more than 30 European reactors.
The company says using MOX to generate electricity is a practical way to consume surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons and reduce the risk of terrorist groups or rogue nations obtaining the material.
Built in 1974 at a cost of $3.6 billion, Catawba produces 2,258 megawatts of electricity by burning uranium dioxide. It - along with McGuire and a third plant in Seneca, S.C. - is one of three nuclear stations owned by Duke Power.
In August, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a preliminary finding allowing Duke Power to test MOX fuel at Catawba. The commission found that testing would not increase the likelihood of an accident at the plant or worsen the results in the event of an accident.
Zeller's group, based in Glendale Springs, N.C., has been one of the most vocal opponents of the MOX program but has not yet decided on a response to the NRC's decision, said Diane Curran, a Washington attorney representing the group.
Duke said the MOX fuel would be introduced in small quantities at the plants. The company plans to use four MOX fuel assemblies out of 193 total fuel assemblies beginning in 2005, Nesbit said.
If testing goes as planned, Duke would be able to seek regulatory approval for expanded use of the fuel beginning around 2010, Nesbit said Monday as he and other Duke officials led a group of reporters and photographers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the nuclear plant, including a rare peek at the spent-fuel pool where 900 fuel assemblies are currently stored under water.
The tour highlighted security measures put in place since Sept. 11, including bulletproof doors and the moat that will encircle the plant's two nuclear reactors.
Security at the plant will not change once the MOX program begins, except during the short period between when the fuel arrives at the plant and when it is placed in storage for later use, Nesbit said.
MOX opponents have raised concerns about security, and the NRC plans to conduct hearings on the matter, Nesbit said.
In August, a small flotilla of boats took to the waters of Charleston Harbor to draw attention to the shipping of weapons-grade plutonium, which demonstrators say is dangerous.
More boats from along the East Coast are expected later this year, when a shipment of plutonium arrives in Charleston and is loaded on a ship for France.
A local environmental group, Citizens Against Plutonium, and Greenpeace want a full environmental impact statement on the Department of Energy's plans to ship 330 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium overseas for processing.
The plutonium powder, which critics say could make 50 dirty bombs, will be sent to France for processing and returned for use in a commercial reactor test run next year.
Nesbit says using MOX could provide McGuire and Catawba with a long-term, economical supply of nuclear fuel.
Each of the two reactors at Catawba produces enough electricity to supply the needs of a city the size of Charlotte. About 1,100 people work at the facility.
-------- tennessee
Tennessee Uranium Fuel Project Receives Third and Final Approval
October 13, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-13-09.asp#anchor4
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved a license amendment to authorize Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc., to possess and use special nuclear material at two facilities on its Erwin, Tennessee, complex. The amendment is the final of three associated with the Blended Low-Enriched Uranium (BLEU) project.
This license amendment allows Nuclear Fuel Services to begin using the oxide conversion building (OCB) and effluent processing building (EPB) for the BLEU project.
Special nuclear material refers to plutonium, uranium-233, or uranium enriched in the isotopes uranium-233 or uranium-235. In this case, the BLEU project will involve the blending of high-enriched uranium with natural unenriched uranium to produce low-enriched uranium. The oxide conversion and effluent processing operations, according to an NRC document, will convert low-enriched uranium liquid into a uranium oxide powder form. "The powder then will be shipped to another facility for fabrication of fuel for a commercial [nuclear] power reactor," the document states.
In July the NRC issued a finding that processing operations proposed for the oxide-conversion building and an effluent-processing building at the Nuclear Fuel Services facility in Erwin will have "no significant impact" on the environment, and therefore, an environmental impact statement will not be prepared.
But the NRC environmental assessment indicated that low levels of chemical and radioactive elements will be released to the environment as the result of the proposed OCB and EPB processing operations.
"Based on information provided by NFS [Nuclear Fuel Services], the safety controls to be employed for the proposed action appear to be sufficient to ensure planned operations will have no significant impact on the environment," the NRC document said.
Monitoring programs are already in place to ensure that any releases of chemicals or radioactive elements remain within allowable federal and state limits, the NRC document states.
The Nuclear Fuel Services plant is near the Nolichucky River, which is upstream from Greene County and is the main water source locally.
Friends of the Nolichucky River Valley, the State of Franklin Group of the Sierra Club, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, and Tennessee Environmental Council have been fighting the licensing on the grounds that it will cause harm to the environment.
The groups have been seeking a full environmental impact statement, covering both past and potential hazards, to make the public aware of the potential dangers the project poses.
Another petitioner, Kathy Helms-Hughes of Butler, has been fighting the project on the grounds that it may pollute water springs northeast of the facility which are the source of drinking water for the city of Elizabethton and the communities of Hampton and Valley Forge.
The NRC approved the first amendment to Nuclear Fuel Services' license, for a uranyl nitrite building, in July 2003. A second amendment, for the blended, low-enriched uranium preparation facility, was approved in January.
NFS also submitted changes to its security plan to address physical protection of the new buildings, as well as changes to its nuclear materials control plan to support the amendment request. These changes were approved in the NRC's safety evaluation report for the license amendment.
The BLEU project is part of a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program to reduce stockpiles of surplus high-enriched weapons grade uranium through re-use or disposal as radioactive waste.
Reuse is considered the favorable option by DOE because weapons grade uranium is converted to a form unsuited for weapons production, the product can be used for peaceful purposes, and the commercial value of the uranium can be recovered. Re-use is also considered preferable because it avoids unnecessary use of limited radioactive waste disposal space.
Notice of the approved license amendment was published October 12 in the Federal Register.
-------- us nuc waste
Congress Approves Nuclear Waste Reclassification Plan
WASHINGTON, DC,
October 13, 2004 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-13-09.asp#anchor3
Language tucked into the massive $447 billion defense bill passed this weekend by the U.S. Congress allows the U.S. Energy Department to reclassify millions of gallons of high level nuclear waste stored in South Carolina and Idaho site as less hazardous.
The reclassification gives the department the authority to leave the waste on site - supporters say the change in policy will expedite cleanup at the site and save some $16 billion.
U.S. Energy Department Secretary Spencer Abraham said the policy change "will allow the Department of Energy to move forward with safe and sensible environmental cleanup of nuclear waste storage tanks in South Carolina and Idaho.
But critics say the move is irresponsible and unsafe and note that some of the tanks have already contaminated local groundwater.
"This back-room legislative fix would leave a legacy of radioactive contamination that could endanger drinking water for millions of Americans," said Geoffrey Fettus, senior project attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
At issue is high-level radioactive waste, largely created by the U.S. nuclear weapons program, stored in massive underground tanks at the two sites.
Some 34 million gallons of the liquid waste resides at the Savannah River site in South Carolina; some 300,000 gallons are stored in tanks at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho Falls.
Federal law currently requires the government to encapsulate this waste in glass and bury it deep underground in a federal repository.
Although the liquid wastes can be drawn out and removed, the Energy Department's method for removing the most radioactive sludge out of the tanks has proven unsafe.
The department is exploring alternatives but the Bush administration favors diluting the waste with grout and leaving it on site permanently - for this to be legal the waste has to be reclassified as less hazardous.
Last year a federal court in Idaho rejected the agency's attempt do this through a rulemaking process. The Bush administration has appealed that ruling, but the language in the defense bill will make the policy legal for Idaho and South Carolina.
The provision does not cover the 53 million gallons of waste stored in tanks at Washington state's Hanford facility.
In June, Washington Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell attempted to strip the language from the bill, but failed by two votes.
Cantwell and other Washington state officials fear the language will give the Energy Department a precedent to force them into accepting a similar deal.
The language was inserted into the defense bill during closed-door negotiations late last week and was not debated by either body.
The Senate approved the bill by voice vote; the House passed the measure by a vote of 359 to 14.
--------
YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT: Money request approved
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By SEAN WHALEY
October 13, 2004
CARSON CITY -- A panel that includes Gov. Kenny Guinn approved a request Tuesday for $1.75 million in additional funding for the state's ongoing efforts to fight construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The request for $1.1 million for the Agency for Nuclear Projects and $650,000 for the attorney general's office for outside legal assistance was approved by the Board of Examiners and will go to the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee on Nov. 17.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the additional funding he requested from the Legislature's contingency fund is needed for several reasons.
The U.S. Department of Energy has indicated it plans to file a licensing application for Yucca Mountain with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December, and the state has to be ready with its experts and legal advisers, he said. But funding to the state from Congress for its Yucca Mountain efforts is in limbo, because a new federal budget has not been passed for this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, he said.
If the federal budget is approved later this year and Nevada gets its funding, the extra state funding may not be required, Loux said.
Though it is unlikely the DOE will be able to file its licensing application because of Nevada's legal victory in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals in July, the state has to be ready, he told the board.
That court decision voided a 10,000-year radiation standard the Environmental Protection Agency had written for the nuclear waste repository, suggesting the period should be longer, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
"We think the program is in big trouble," Loux told the board.
The board made up of Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Secretary of State Dean Heller, approved the request for funding.
Guinn said the money should last through at least March, when the Legislature can debate the funding issues for the agency.
The 2003 Legislature put in just under $1 million a year in general fund revenue to support the state agency in its fight in the current two-year budget.
Another $2 million was allocated to the attorney general's office for legal expenses related to Yucca Mountain in the current two-year budget, but due to a misunderstanding, about $1.1 million reverted to the state general fund at the end of the 2003-04 fiscal year on June 30. The $650,000 request by Sandoval would be covered by the reverted funds.
The Nuclear Projects Agency has relied on federal support for its fight, but Congress allocated only $1 million for fiscal 2004, far less than the $2.5 million anticipated. And with the current budget stalemate, no funding is yet available this year.
Sandoval has sued the Energy Department for more government funding.
Guinn and most Nevada political leaders oppose plans by the DOE to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
-----
Group admits violating state open-meeting law
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By KEITH ROGERS
October 13, 2004
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Oct-13-Wed-2004/news/24981241.html
Elected officials from rural Nevada who met behind closed doors to discuss a rail corridor to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site violated the state open-meeting law, the state attorney general's office says.
The group, known as the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group, was found to be a public body and admitted to violating the open-meeting law, according to a settlement agreement signed by Deputy Attorney General Neil Rombardo.
To avoid a criminal investigation, the group agreed "to hold as many public meetings as necessary to cure its failure to comply" with the open-meeting law, the agreement stated.
"At these meetings (the group) shall reconsider all past items and not consider any new items until all past items have been considered in public," said the agreement with officials from Lincoln, Esmeralda and Nye counties and the city of Caliente.
The group was formed last year at the suggestion of the Department of Energy. It includes Nye County commissioners Henry Neth and Candice Trummell; Esmeralda County Commissioner Ben Viljoen; Lincoln County commissioners Spencer Hafen and Tommy Rowe; Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips and City Councilman Ashley Moore.
Phillips had said the open-meeting law didn't apply because they were "a very informal working group ... less than a quorum of folks talking about issues relate."
Instead, Rombardo found that the group, because of its members and function, meets the definition of a public body.
--------
Court refuses to delay radiation ruling
Nuclear industry seeking court review
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By STEVE TETREAULT
October 13, 2004
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Oct-13-Wed-2004/news/24980946.html
WASHINGTON -- A federal court has denied a nuclear industry appeal to keep a damaging Yucca Mountain ruling on hold until the Supreme Court decides whether to intervene.
The decision means a July court ruling throwing out a 10,000-year radiation protection measure for the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository could become final within a week.
The legal setback could further complicate the Energy Department's repository program, which is facing other financial and technical problems.
Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency officials had said they accepted the July ruling and planned to develop new radiation standards to replace the ones invalidated by the court.
But the Nuclear Energy Institute indicated it wanted to ask the Supreme Court to review the issue. Industry attorneys asked a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to delay formalizing the July decision until the higher court could rule.
The appeals court denied the NEI appeal in a one-sentence order Friday that became available on Tuesday.
NEI officials "are assessing what our options are and we don't have a firm hand on it yet," spokesman Steve Kerekes said.
Asked if NEI might abandon its bid to take the Yucca Mountain case to the Supreme Court, Kerekes said, "That's a possibility, but I don't know. Everything is up in the air right now."
The deadline for filing a Supreme Court appeal is Nov. 30.
NEI in court papers said the Yucca case raises questions about EPA powers to form regulations. Legal experts considered it a longshot that Supreme Court justices would take an interest.
The industry's effort to attract the justices' attention probably would be hurt further because the government was not planning to join the appeal, the experts said.
The July ruling has complicated the Energy Department's plans to move the repository project forward.
DOE officials have said they want to complete a repository license application by the end of the year, but it has been unclear whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could review an application that lacks radiation protection standards.
DOE deputy secretary Kyle McSlarrow said last month the project's time lines were being reassessed in light of mounting problems.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
15 Afghan Candidates to File Vote Complaints With Panel
October 13, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/asia/13afghanistan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 12 - Fifteen of the 17 candidates who ran against the interim president, Hamid Karzai, in Afghanistan's first presidential election met here on Tuesday to prepare official complaints of multiple voting, ballot box stuffing and other irregularities.
The complaints will be investigated by a commission set up by the United Nations after the 15 candidates called for a suspension of the election on Saturday and accused the United Nations and Afghan Joint Election Management Board of bias toward Mr. Karzai. The candidates agreed to abide by the panel's findings.
A spokesman for Mr. Karzai's campaign, Hamid Elmi, said Mr. Karzai's campaign office was also submitting complaints involving other candidates' supporters, but he did not specify what. The large number of complaints may slow down a counting process already expected to take at least two weeks.
The candidates' main complaint focused on the failure of a system to prevent multiple voting, in which voters' hands were marked with what was supposed to be indelible ink but which often washed off easily. Critics said the problem had opened the election to widespread fraud.
"It was systematic rigging," said Dr. Yassa, an aide to one candidate, Muhammad Mohaqeq, an ethnic Hazara and a Shiite Muslim.
"There are 15 candidates against Karzai and every one has dozens of complaints," said Abdul Bashir Bezhan, a party deputy to another candidate, Latif Pedram. He said there were numerous accounts of multiple voting, with some reports of people who had voted up to 15 times, and who were ready to admit it and show their multiple cards.
Other complaints involved ballot-box fraud. Dr. Yassa said two boxes from a Hazara district of Kabul had been found to be missing ballots - one lacked 300 and one 200 - at the counting center during the first checking procedure. He said he suspected foul play because the district was known for its support for Mr. Mohaqeq and the missing ballots would have almost certainly been in his favor.
Another candidate, Homayoun Shah Assefi, a former Afghan diplomat, told of a case he learned of on Saturday from a police official in Ghazni, some 100 miles south of Kabul, in which the manager of a polling station took home two ballot boxes and returned them on election morning stuffed with ballots. The police official, he said, gave the names of those involved and also had the numbers of the boxes.
The story did not end there: the manager was briefly detained by the local police but was released after saying the falsified ballots had been filled out in favor of Mr. Karzai, Mr. Assefi said, and the boxes were put in with the legitimate boxes.
"I don't know if such an infamous case has occurred in other places at this stage, but on that day I received complaints of fraud and cheating from Kandahar and Nangarhar as well," Mr. Assefi said.
In Spinbaldak, in southern Afghanistan, poll officers were ordered by their supervisor to fill out 700 ballots in favor of Mr. Karzai, according to an election official interviewed in Kandahar. Two men, tribal elders from a nearby refugee camp, arrived with 700 registration cards and said they wanted to vote for the entire camp, said the election official, who asked to remain anonymous.
The 700 cards were divided among the poll officers in five adjoining rooms. A poll official said he was handed 100 cards and ordered to punch each of them with a hole-puncher, while his colleague was told to mark ballots for Mr. Karzai. The election official said the poll official had objected but had been told by his supervisor, "You should not worry, you should just do your work."
Another poll official described working in a mountainous area in southern Afghanistan and being ordered by tribal chiefs to fill out 60 to 70 extra ballots for absentee voters, many of them women. The man said his supervisor had told him to comply. "It was in the middle of the desert," he said. "The supervisor said we are so far from anywhere, please just do it. It does not matter." All the extra ballots were filled out for Mr. Karzai, he said.
-------- biological weapons
'Growing threat' of bio-attack on coalition in Iraq
CIA warns of insurgents' plans for germ warfare
Los Angeles Times
OCT 13, 2004
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/topstories/story/0,4386,277292,00.html
WASHINGTON - Insurgent networks across Iraq are increasingly trying to acquire and use toxic nerve gases, blister agents and germ weapons against coalition forces, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) says.
Investigators said one group recruited scientists and sought to prepare poisons over seven months, before being dismantled in June. Advertisement
US officials say the threat is especially worrisome as leaders of the previously unknown group, which investigators dubbed the 'Al Abud network', were based in Fallujah in proximity to insurgents aligned with fugitive militant Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
The CIA says Zarqawi, who is blamed for numerous attacks on US forces and beheadings of hostages, has long sought to use chemical and biological weapons against targets in Europe as well as Iraq.
An exhaustive report released last week by Mr Charles Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons investigator in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s and never tried to rebuild them.
But a little-noticed section of the 960-page report warns that the danger of a 'devastating' attack with unconventional weapons has grown since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq last year.
Neither of the two Al Abud chemists had any ties to Saddam's long-defunct weapons programmes, and Mr Duelfer's investigators found no evidence that the group's poison project was part of a 'prescribed plan by the former regime to fuel an insurgency'.
The leaders and financiers of the network 'remain at large, and alleged chemical munitions remain unaccounted' for, the report said.
It added that other insurgent groups are 'planning or attempting to produce or acquire' chemical and biological agents throughout Iraq, and warns that the availability of chemicals and munitions, as well as sympathetic former Iraqi weapons scientists, 'increases the future threat'.
The new discoveries are separate from several attacks this year involving chemical munitions, the report said.
In May and June, insurgents used chemical-filled artillery shells, left over from Iraq's pre-1991 stocks, in three roadside bombs. Partly because of the shells' age, no chemical injuries were reported.
In all, US forces have recovered 53 decaying chemical-filled shells or artillery rockets that apparently were looted from unguarded ammunition bunkers or other sites.
Investigators from Mr Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group learned of the Al Abud threat by chance in March, when a US Army patrol raided a laboratory in a Baghdad market known for chemical supply shops.
They discovered an Iraqi chemist who had successfully produced small quantities of ricin, a potentially deadly toxin made from castor beans.
After the chemist was interrogated, Mr Duelfer quickly created a special team of covert agents, analysts and weapons experts to track down the scientist's contacts and arrest other members of the Al Abud network, named for the laboratory where the chemist was found.
By June, the team was able to identify and 'neutralise' the group's chemists, chemical suppliers, and other members of the network.
A series of raids, interrogations and detentions 'disrupted key activities at Al Abud-related laboratories, safe houses, supply stores' and organisational centres, according to Mr Duelfer's report.
-------- britain
Blair Apologizes Over Iraq;
Rejects Tory Charge of Deception
October 13, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/europe/13cnd-blair.html
LONDON, Oct. 13 - Prime Minister Tony Blair gave his most explicit apology to date for the flawed intelligence assessments upon which he took Britain to war in Iraq, but he rejected opposition accusations that he had misrepresented that intelligence.
"I take full responsibility and apologize for any information given in good faith that has subsequently turned out to be wrong," Mr. Blair told the House of Commons during a spirited exchange with opposition members.
"What I do not in any way accept is that there was a deception of anyone," Mr. Blair said. "I will not apologize for removing Saddam Hussein. I will not apologize for the conflict. I believe it was right then, is right now and essential for the wider security of that region and the world."
Though Mr. Blair made a muscular defense of his position, his remarks today reflected his careful management of the issue in Parliament, where a large fraction of his Labor Party is in rebellion over the Iraq policy. Together with opposition members, they have been demanding an apology of some sort for mistakes about the existence of prewar weapons stockpiles and for inadequate planning for stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.
Britain's M.I. 6 intelligence service has been forced to retract its assertions that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and that such weapons could be deployed on 45 minutes' notice, a claim that helped to galvanize British public opinion in favor of war.
Michael Howard, the Conservative opposition leader who supported the war, rose to confront Mr. Blair over his handling of the intelligence that led up to it.
He said that before Mr. Blair could move on politically, "there is one matter that you must deal with: You didn't accurately report the intelligence you received to the country."
"Will you now say sorry for that?" Mr. Howard demanded.
Mr. Blair accused Mr. Howard of playing politics over the issue of faulty intelligence, and seemed to borrow a line from President Bush by questioning Mr. Howard's support for British troops and his qualifications to be a prime minister. British forces in Iraq number 9,165, a Ministry of Defense spokeswoman said today.
"Remember that he and his party supported the war for precisely the same reasons as we did," Mr. Blair said, adding, "It would be more helpful if he would back our troops out in Iraq rather than doing what he is doing now."
But Mr. Howard retorted calmly: "We back our troops wholeheartedly. I didn't ask him to apologize for the war, because I support it. I didn't ask him either to apologize for what he describes as the information.
"I asked him very specifically about the way he misrepresented the intelligence he received to the country. Why can't he bring yourself to say sorry for that?"
Mr. Blair responded: "I cannot bring myself to say that I misrepresented the evidence, since I do not accept that I did."
-------- business
Boeing Competitors Protest
Lockheed, BAE Dispute Druyun's C-130 Choice
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28017-2004Oct12.html
Lockheed Martin Corp. and BAE Systems North America Inc. filed protests with the Air Force yesterday over a $4 billion contract to upgrade electronics on C-130 military transport planes awarded to Boeing Co. in 2001.
The companies had 10 days to dispute the contract after former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun acknowledged in court documents that an "objective selection authority may not have selected Boeing." Druyun admitted she favored Boeing after the company gave jobs to her daughter and son-in-law.
Raytheon Co. also was in the competition but has since sold the unit that bid for the contract and did not file a protest. "When we have more information, we will determine if any action on our part is appropriate," a Raytheon spokesman said. The company could still file a protest with the Government Accountability Office or a claim with the Court of Federal Claims.
Druyun was sentenced to nine months in federal prison Oct. 1 after admitting she gave Boeing preferential treatment for years because she felt indebted to the firm. Druyun accepted a position as a Boeing vice president after retiring from the Air Force in 2003.
The C-130 work is among hundreds of contracts Druyun helped award that are now being reviewed by the Pentagon inspector general. "We will take appropriate action based upon the IG investigation and an evaluation of the protest," Air Force spokesman Doug Karas said.
Contract protests are typically considered long shots, but the unusual circumstances surrounding Druyun's admissions have made it more likely the Air Force will take some action, industry analysts said. Both companies will likely try to recoup the millions they spent bidding for the work, and the Air Force also could consider reallocating some of the contract or holding a new competition, they said.
"Ms. Druyun's admitted bias and quid-pro-quo actions as the source selection authority clearly corrupted the acquisition process, which we had assumed at the time was being managed with fairness and integrity," BAE said in a statement. Lockheed's loss of the 10-year C-130 contract was considered stunning within the defense industry, particularly since Lockheed had built the planes for decades.
"It is important for us to restore our corporate reputation after the contract loss . . . and it's important to find a remedy for an injustice that Darleen Druyun caused through her unlawful actions," Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky said.
Lockheed also asked the Air Force to review all of its competitions that Druyun helped decide, including a contract of more than $2 billion for a small-diameter bomb. The deal was awarded to Boeing in August 2003, months before Druyun retired and accepted a job at the company. The review also should include two classified programs, as well as other contracts, Lockheed said. "We are confident that the Air Force will act on these requests expeditiously to resolve them," Jurkowsky said.
Druyun was also involved in a 1990s competition for rocket launchers in which Boeing was awarded a majority of the work over Lockheed. That contract is now the subject of a federal investigation since Boeing acknowledged that several of its employees had proprietary Lockheed documents during the competition. Lockheed is also suing Boeing over that work.
The first of more than 400 C-130 upgrades is not expected to begin until January 2005, the Air Force said. Boeing, which has spent the past three years developing the technology, has already earned more than $300 million on the contract.
"Boeing is not aware of having received any special consideration in the award of the [C-130 contract], and believes the award was justified on its merits," Boeing spokesman Douglas J. Kennett said.
-------- china
Chinese information warfare threatens Taiwan
October 13, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041012-101455-7846r.htm
Taiwan is facing a growing threat from Chinese computer attacks and other information-based strikes designed to cripple its infrastructures, a senior Pentagon official says.
"China is actively developing options to create chaos on the island, to compromise components of Taiwan's critical infrastructure - telecommunications, utilities, broadcast media, cellular, Internet and computer networks," said Richard Lawless, deputy undersecretary of defense for East Asia and Pacific affairs.
Mr. Lawless said in a recent speech that China is looking at several "coercion options" for strategic information warfare to be conducted in a calculated manner.
"These threats range from computer network attacks to compromising Taiwan's public utilities, communications, operational security and transportation," he said.
Speaking at the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference held in Scottsdale, Ariz., which was attended by defense officials from the Republic of China (Taiwan), Mr. Lawless also warned that Taiwan's legislature needs to pass a special $18 billion defense spending bill or risk losing international support. A copy of the Oct. 4 speech was obtained by The Washington Times.
"Make no mistake, the passage of this budget is a litmus test of Taiwan's commitment to its self-defense," he said.
The Bush administration has offered Taiwan about $20 billion in weapons systems, including guided-missile destroyers, P-3 anti-submarine aircraft, diesel submarines and Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems.
Since 2001, however, only $700 million in long-range radar systems were sent to bolster the island's security. By contrast, China's military has started a large-scale buildup of forces opposite the island that include about 600 missiles aimed at Taiwan.
China's military also has stepped up work on information warfare - the use of computers and other weapons to target computer-based and electronic systems in crippling attacks, either electronically or with kinetic weapons.
The goal of the Chinese "would be to paralyze Taiwan's economy and the government's ability to function," said Mr. Lawless, noting that Beijing's information warfare efforts are targeting Taiwan's ability to function as a society.
Mr. Lawless said Taiwan's information infrastructure has a few physical connections that link its communications to the rest of the world. The United States, which is committed to preventing China from using force to reunite the island with the mainland, could be cut off from Taiwan, he said.
Security of energy supplies and transportation networks also must be strengthened.
"By hardening Taiwan critical infrastructure, Taiwan can protect itself from pervasive coercive attacks that could undermine domestic and international confidence in Taiwan's ability to identify, manage and resolve a crisis," Mr. Lawless said.
On Monday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman criticized Mr. Lawless for remarks that "highlighted the so-called military threat" from China.
China's government protested the meeting in Arizona as a violation of the "one-China" policy of denying formal recognition to Taiwan's government.
-------- iraq
Bomb Blasts and Suicide Attack Kill 6 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
October 13, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/middleeast/13CND-IRAQ.html?ei=5094&en=aa3df80e84c2b4d0&hp=&ex=1097726400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 13 - Six American soldiers were killed in roadside bomb blasts and a suicide attack, the military said today, as insurgents continued their assaults.
Two soldiers died in the northern city of Mosul today, after a suicide driver rammed his explosives-filled vehicle into an American convoy at 2:20 p.m. One soldier was seriously wounded and two others returned to duty, the military said.
Four soldiers were killed by roadside bombs, one in the western part of the capital at about 4:40 this morning, the military said. Three others were killed late Tuesday night in eastern Baghdad, when a roadside bomb exploded in their convoy.
At least 1,075 American soldiers have died since March 2003, when the war began.
Later today, an Iraqi group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheaded two Iraqi intelligence officers and posted a video of the killings on the Internet, Reuters reported.
In the video, said to be from the One God and Jihad Group, the two men said they were captured in Baghdad on Sept. 28.
One of the men said, "I advise my brothers, the sons of Iraq, who are working for the government agencies, in intelligence, the armed forces and the police to repent," the news agency said.
Both were then beheaded.
Separately, the Iraqi interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, threatened military action unless foreign militants led by Mr. Zarqawi were handed over.
The continuing deaths followed a series of aggressive strikes on Tuesday by American forces in insurgent strongholds west of Baghdad, including firing missiles into the streets of Falluja and conducting raids alongside Iraqi commandos in seven mosques in Ramadi.
The wave of assaults inflamed Sunni Muslim leaders and residents of the cities, who said innocent civilians were killed or arrested in the operations.
Warplanes attacked twice in Falluja in the early hours, with the first strike demolishing one of Iraq's most celebrated kabob restaurants, Haji Hussein, named after the owner. Mr. Hussein's son and his nephew, both working as night watchmen, were killed in the attack, residents said. The second attack took place about four hours later in another neighborhood, hitting an empty house and injuring two neighbors, nearby residents said.
The American military issued a statement asserting that the first target was a meeting place for insurgents associated with Mr. Zarqawi, head of a network that has taken responsibility for numerous attacks on American and Iraqi security forces, as well as for the beheadings of Western hostages. As for the second attack, it said missiles had been aimed at a safe house used by the Zarqawi network. "Intelligence sources tracked and confirmed that Zarqawi associates were using the safe house at the time of the strike," the military said.
In nearby Ramadi, the seat of restive Anbar Province, American troops and Iraqi soldiers arrested a Sunni cleric, Sheik Abdul Aleem Saidy, and his son Osama, both members of one of the country's most famous religious families, according to spokesmen for the Muslim Scholars Association, a prominent group of mostly Sunni clerics. Among the Iraqi soldiers involved in the mosque raids were former Kurdish and Shiite militiamen, one of the spokesmen, Abdul Satter Abdul Jabbar, said. "There is a sense of sectarianism in this," he said.
American commanders have in the recent past deployed units of the Iraqi National Guard that are made up of militiamen recruited from political parties representing diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. Last April, during a two-front uprising across western and southern Iraq, marines in Falluja fought alongside the Iraqi National Guard's 36th Battalion, which has fighters recruited from Kurdish and Shiite political parties. The battalion reportedly fought well, but the use of such units has raised the ire of Sunnis.
The attacks on Tuesday came as the American military was trying to put rebel-held territory around the country, especially the hotspots of Anbar Province, under control to prepare for general elections scheduled in January. A wide voter turnout, even in areas hostile to the American occupation, is needed to ensure a sense of legitimacy. American officials have said they could very well invade Ramadi and Falluja, the most intractable cities, but may hold off until after the American presidential elections in early November.
In the southern holy city of Najaf, the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, issued a statement from calling for all Iraqis qualified to vote to properly register for the elections. The ayatollah also called on Iraqi leaders to organize committees in neighborhoods to help register voters.
Ayatollah Sistani has been one of the strongest proponents of popular elections in Iraq, pushing for the American government and the United Nations to honor the January timetable. Because Shiite Muslims make up at least 60 percent of the country's population, Shiite candidates will presumably dominate the elections and take over control of the region, which has been run by Sunnis since the days of the Ottoman Empire.
Various Shiite groups are already jockeying to put together slates of candidates and win backing from prominent religious leaders such as Ayatollah Sistani and Moktada al-Sadr, a popular anti-American cleric.
Ayatollah Sistani asserted in his statement that neighborhood committees should help people register for "the election that we hope will be held at the scheduled time and will be free and honest, based on the participation of all Iraqis."
In Sadr City, a vast slum in northeastern Baghdad, people continued selling heavy weapons to Iraqi security forces at three police stations, as part of an amnesty agreement between the organization of Mr. Sadr and Iraqi and American officials. The weapons purchase program began on Monday and is to run until Friday. After weeks of having his militia, the Mahdi Army, pounded by the American military, Mr. Sadr has agreed through his aides to disarm it.
Mr. Sadr has made such promises before but broken them by reigniting attacks against American soldiers and Iraqi security forces. This time, though, his aides say he is serious about trying to get involved in a legitimate political process, especially given the short timetable before the scheduled elections. He commands enormous support throughout the south and especially among the 2.2 million people of Sadr City, and could play a significant role in any popular election.
The American military said Tuesday that soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division handed out 300 frozen chickens to residents of Sadr City one day last week. The military said in a statement that the soldiers drove up to a "major thoroughfare" with boxes of frozen chicken and began opening them, attracting swarms of impoverished children. After a half-hour, "all that was left were empty boxes, most shredded by the groping hands of the Iraqi children," the military said.
In Mosul, gunmen fatally shot a provincial council member, Abdul Majid al-Antar, and his driver as Mr. Antar was going to work, police and health officials said.
Marines in Ramadi said the mosque raids on Tuesday came after insurgents had repeatedly used mosques as shelters or as staging areas for attacks. The most recent incident occurred on Monday afternoon, when guerrillas fired at marines and Iraqi National Guardsmen from a mosque in the nearby town of Hit, the First Marine Division said in a statement. After a three-hour exchange of gunfire, the division said, the marines launched an airstrike that dropped "precision-guided munitions" on the mosque.
"It's a very bad situation in Ramadi," Muhammad Bashar al-Fadhi, a spokesman for the Muslim Scholars Association, said in an interview. "The Americans are just arresting whoever is in front of them at the mosques. They're behaving in a strange manner."
--------
Insurgent Alliance Is Fraying In Fallujah
Locals, Fearing Invasion, Turn Against Foreign Arabs
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28105-2004Oct12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 -- Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials.
Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.
"If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force," said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah's Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents.
Located 35 miles west of Baghdad in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, Fallujah has been outside the control of Iraqi authorities and U.S. military forces since April, when a siege by U.S. Marines was lifted and Iraqi security forces were given responsibility for the city's security. Local and foreign insurgents gradually gained control, and Iraqi and U.S. officials say Fallujah has become a principal source of instability in the country.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.
"He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near," Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.
One of the foreign guerrillas killed by local fighters was Abu Abdallah Suri, a Syrian and a prominent member of Zarqawi's group. Suri's body was discovered Sunday. He was shot in the head and chest while being chased by a carload of tribesmen, according to a security guard who said he witnessed the killing.
Residents say foreign fighters recently have taken to gathering in Fallujah's grimy commercial district after being denied shelter in residential neighborhoods because their presence so often attracts U.S. warplanes. The airstrikes and the turmoil in the streets have spurred perhaps half of the city's 300,000 residents to flee, residents and officials said.
U.S. aircraft hit Fallujah twice on Tuesday. An airstrike just after midnight destroyed the city's best-known restaurant, a kebab house that a military statement said was used as an arms depot, citing "numerous secondary explosions." A second strike at 4 a.m. destroyed "a known terrorist safe house" in the northeast of the city, the statement said.
Adnan, the taxi driver who moved his panicked wife and four children to another town, said attitudes toward the foreign fighters have changed dramatically since they poured into Fallujah after the Marines' siege ended in April. "We were deceived by them," he said. "We welcomed them first because we thought they came to support us, but now everything is clear."
Among the tensions dividing the locals and the foreigners is religion. People in Fallujah, known as the city of mosques, have chafed at the stern brand of Islam that the newcomers brought with them. The non-Iraqi Arabs berated women who did not cover themselves head-to-toe in black -- very rare in Iraq -- and violently opposed local customs rooted in the town's more mystical religious tradition. One Fallujah man killed a Kuwaiti who said he could not pray at the grave of an ancestor.
Residents said the overwhelming majority of Fallujah's people also have been repulsed by the atrocities that Zarqawi and other extremists have made commonplace in Iraq. The foreign militants are thought to produce the car bombs that now explode around Iraq several times a day, and Zarqawi's organization has asserted responsibility for the slayings of several Westerners, some of which were shown in videos posted on the Internet.
There was another digital display of a beheading on Tuesday. The victim apparently was a Shiite Muslim Arab, and the group that said it posted the video identified itself as the Ansar al-Sunna Army.
Abu Barra, commander of a group of native insurgents called the Allahu Akbar Battalions, said: "Please do not mix the cards. There is an Iraqi resistance, a genuine resistance, and there are other groups trying to settle accounts. There is also terror targeting Iraqis.
President Bush, he said, "knows that and so does the government, but they purposely group all three under the tag of 'terrorism.' "
Barra and other insurgent leaders said the "genuine resistance" is a disciplined force that restricts its attacks to military targets, chiefly U.S. forces. It is motivated, they say, by Iraqi nationalism and humiliation over what it regards as a foreign occupation.
"The others," Barra said, "are Arab Salafis who claim that any Iraqi or Muslim not willing to carry arms is an infidel. They are the crux of our ailment. Most of them are Saudis, Syrians" and North Africans. Salafism is a strain of Islam that seeks to restore the faith to the way it was in the days of the prophet Muhammad, 14 centuries ago.
"It is the Zarqawis and his Salafi group who are going to lead Fallujah, Samarra, Baqubah, Mosul and even some parts of Baghdad to disaster and death," Barra said.
Such worries are encouraged by U.S. and Iraqi officials, who together have mounted offensives in recent weeks to reclaim areas held by insurgents. U.S. forces have led battles to take Najaf, Tall Afar, Samarra and, last week, a string of towns southwest of Baghdad. The operations are intended to establish government control over the entire country before nationwide elections promised for January.
But they also serve, officials say, as a psychological lever on Fallujah, long considered the toughest insurgent outpost.
"The pressure is certainly going up, both as a result of our airstrikes and as a result of their seeing Najaf, Tall Afar, Samarra giving a sense this whole thing is serious," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said. "There's a lot of fear in Fallujah."
Many residents say the same. A delegation of six prominent Fallujans began negotiating with Iraq's interim government late last month. But senior government officials said it was only after the Oct. 1 assault on Samarra that the Fallujah delegation approached the task with new zeal.
The proposal the delegation took back to Fallujah calls for surrendering control of the city to the Iraqi National Guard. U.S. forces would remain outside the city unless the lightly armed government forces were attacked.
But first, all foreign fighters must leave the city, and the foreigners are adamantly and publicly opposing the plan. Their representative voted against it in a meeting last week of the city's ruling mujaheddin shura, or council of holy warriors, which supported the peace proposal, 10 to 2. The local insurgent who cast the other negative vote was later persuaded to change his mind, residents say.
Foreign fighters already are blamed for violating a cease-fire in April and prompting a Marine offensive that killed hundreds. Dulaimy said a Syrian was slain by local insurgents "after he fired on American forces during the last truce." In remarks broadcast from one of the city's main mosques on Thursday, an insurgent negotiator, Khalid Hamoud Jumaili, said a city of several hundred thousand should not be sacrificed for a handful of foreign fighters.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces kept up military pressure Tuesday in several nearby cities. Marines raided eight mosques allegedly used as armed bases in Ramadi, a provincial capital about 25 miles west of Fallujah, and called in airstrikes in the town of Hit, about 60 miles to the northwest.
"I think there is unquestionably a fissure and there are probably several different splits based on different groups," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his remarks were not cleared by Washington. But "whether any of the townspeople have enough force to make this fissure into something that changes the complexion of things" remains to be seen, the official said.
The assault on Samarra was mounted after a more unified local establishment headed by tribal leaders failed in a similar bid to eject a far smaller band of insurgents and foreign fighters than are holding Fallujah, the official noted.
Maki Nazzal, a Fallujah native who travels into the city frequently as an aid worker, said substantial support remains for the foreigners, especially given the number of civilian casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes.
"Not all the people in Fallujah want these people to leave," Nazzal said. "They always have the explanation of Americans bringing people from Spain, Salvador, Poland and over the world to help them and why can't our brothers help us?"
Some foreign fighters already have left, at least for now. The fighting Tuesday in Hit erupted as Marines pursued insurgents who had recently arrived in the city from Fallujah, residents said.
"There are Arab fighters and Iraqis too," said Omar Jabbawi, 23, an engineering student at Anbar University. "They are supplied with modern weapons which even the modern army didn't have. They killed some of the people the moment they came, saying that they were spies for the Americans."
The blend of insurgents held the town, some patrolling a street of shuttered stores, others praying on the sidewalk.
"Most of the people of the city knew that after Fallujah, the fighters will come to Hit because it is an open city and has many wide woods in which maneuvering is easy," said Abeer Fadhill, 32, a traffic policeman.
A woman in Hit said one fighter had said they had come to liberate Hit as they had Fallujah.
"We don't want to be another Fallujah," said the woman, 45, who gave her name as Umm Hussein. "Ramadan is coming, and we don't have any will to lose a father, a son, a relative or even a friend. Let them leave in peace and fight in a desert away from houses and people."
--------
Allawi Threatens Military Action
October 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Fallujah.html?oref=login
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's interim prime minister on Wednesday threatened military action against the main insurgent stronghold of Fallujah if residents don't hand over Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's warning came as government negotiators and Fallujah representatives were trying to hammer out a deal to restore government control over the city, seen as the hardest of the militant-held regions to crack.
The chief negotiator representing Fallujah said Wednesday the talks are in their final phase but differences remain over handing over insurgents wanted by Iraqi and U.S. authorities on criminal charges. Many in the city view the Iraqis fighting in the insurgency as heroic ``mujahideen,'' or holy warriors.
Fallujah, in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, is also believed to be a stronghold of al-Zarqawi's feared Tawhid and Jihad group, which has kidnapped and beheaded numerous foreigners and has carried out a number of bloody bombing attacks.
``If they do not turn in al-Zarqawi and his group, we will carry out operations in Fallujah,'' Allawi told a meeting of the 100-member interim National Council on Wednesday. ``We will not be lenient.''
``I would like to reassert once more that the option of using force is a last resort for the government to settle the security situation,'' he said. ``We shall remain prepared to deal positively with any initiative to disarm and enter the political process.''
But he warned of the likelihood of more bombings and other insurgent attacks. ``The more we crack down on terrorist havens, the more these strikes are going to increase,'' he said.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities have used a mix of diplomacy and force to try to regain control of insurgent enclaves in time to hold nationwide elections in January. Troops swept into the militant stronghold of Samarra, northwest of Baghdad, earlier this month and have been carrying out smaller-scale raids in recent days in other areas.
In Fallujah, a city of 300,000, U.S. forces have staged weeks of ``precision strikes'' aimed buildings believed to be safehouses of al-Zarqawi's network and its associates -- even as negotiations have continued.
Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, fell under the control of hardline Islamic clerics and their armed followers after Marines ended a bloody three-week siege in late April.
``Fallujah of course is an honest city but it has been manipulated by a deviant bunch that wants to harm Iraq,'' Allawi said.
He promised to show council members photographs and documents confirming terrorist activity in the city and other insurgent strongholds.
``You can see for yourself the evil of these people and their ongoing fight to strike Iraq,'' Allawi said. He gave no details.
In his comments Wednesday, Fallujah chief negotiator Sheik Khaled al-Jumeili did not mention al-Zarqawi specifically or address demands for the Jordanian's handover.
``There are only a handful of Arab fighters in Fallujah. When a deal is struck, they will just leave the city,'' he told the Associated Press by telephone from Fallujah.
Al-Jumeili said city leaders are concerned over how insurgents will be treated if Iraqi National Guardsmen take control. ``The people of Fallujah want guarantees that they will not be attacked by the National Guardsmen,'' he said.
He said it was agreed that the National Guard units taking over security in Fallujah would include natives of the city and that residents whose relatives have been killed or injured or whose property has been damaged would receive compensation. There was no immediate government or U.S. comment.
Still to be ironed out is what happens to specific individuals wanted by Iraqi and U.S. military authorities to face criminal charges, al-Jumeili said. They presumably include the killers of four U.S. contractors in March, whose deaths led to the three-week siege of Fallujah in April.
``They are outlaws to them but they are mujahedeen to us,'' he said.
It is not known how many foreign fighters are in Fallujah and how many Iraqis have worked with al-Zarqawi. Fallujah residents say foreign Arab fighters number no more than 25 -- a figure contested by the Americans.
Al-Jumeili said he last met government representatives Monday evening and that the government was waiting for the American response to the negotiations.
The continued violence, however, has led to some grumbling by residents who now privately speak of their wish for the mujahedeen to leave and spare the city further turmoil.
Already, vast swathes of Fallujah facing U.S. Marines' positions are deserted for fear of renewed fighting, making way for the insurgents to fortify their positions.
AP correspondent Rawya Rageh contributed to this report.
---------
Radical Sunni, Shi'ite groups help free U.S. photographer
October 13, 2004
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041013-122214-7886r.htm
LONDON - An American photojournalist who was kidnapped during a photo shoot in Baghdad Sunday has been driven into the center of Baghdad and set free - after what appears to have been unprecedented cooperation between Sunni clerics and hard-line Shi'ite fighters loyal to the renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Both are rivals and oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq.
The kidnapping was first reported in The Washington Times.
"We find it encouraging that the level of tolerance for kidnapping among anti-Western groups in Iraq seems to be declining," said a security source, who declined to be identified.
A spate of recent beheadings had left security officials in Baghdad worried that an American captive might face a similar grisly fate.
In his five months in Iraq, Paul Taggart, 24, had performed a number of dangerous assignments for World Picture News, including extensive photo shoots in the battle-scarred holy Shi'ite city Najaf.
He was starting a 10-day assignment to photograph fighters in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum area comprising 2.2. million people. In recent months, many parts of it have fallen to Mahdi's Army, under the control of the young Sheik al-Sadr.
"I was well treated and well fed," Mr. Taggart told his parents last night, the relieved couple said.
In one of the main squares of the volatile district Sunday, a gang of three masked men forced Mr. Taggart out of his car at gunpoint.
Although Mr. Taggart's driver-translator had brought him to his own local area of Sadr City, he was unable to prevent the kidnapping. The attackers let the driver go, and he reported the seizure to the authorities.
According to Sadr City residents, the captors, who were Shi'ites, later approached Baghdad's Sunni Muslim Islamic Council, offering to "sell" Mr. Taggart to any Sunni extremist group - presumably also including the group under the notorious Jordanian insurgent leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose men have so far beheaded 10 captives, including two Americans and a Briton.
Though strongly anti-American, the council members immediately contacted members of Mahdi's Army. Spokesmen for the group had vehemently denied any involvement in the kidnapping.
Mahdi's Army, according to its own insiders' account, sent armed men to rendezvous with the kidnap gang, which was overpowered. Five men were then placed in their custody, and Sheik al-Sadr's fighters started negotiations to hand over Mr. Taggart to U.S. forces.
That sort of development would have seemed unthinkable a few months ago.
However, Sheik al-Sadr's group is now trying to improve relations with the U.S. forces which they had been battling, and it is aiming to participate in next January's election process.
A turnover of arms in Sadr City began Monday, in which Sheik al-Sadr's fighters are getting paid to turn in rocket-propelled grenade launchers, semi-automatic weapons and rocket-launchers.
However, Sheik al-Sadr told his fighters last week that the turnover is "voluntary."
It is apparently the second time he has been instrumental in releasing a kidnapped journalist.
James Brandon, a young reporter for a British newspaper, was severely beaten and subjected to a mock execution in the southern British-controlled city of Basra in August, but was released after an order or appeal from the renegade cleric. Shi'ite gangs of kidnappers, usually seeking financial reward, are not known to have killed any non-Iraqi hostages; Sunni extremists are blamed for all foreign hostage deaths so far.
Probably coincidentally, Mr. Taggart had been staying at the same hotel as one of the two French journalists who were also kidnapped in August. Both men are still missing.
The hotel lies within a cluster around the Hamra hotel frequented mainly by journalists, along with some foreign businessmen and a dwindling band of humanitarian aid workers.
That group of hotels has its own barriers to block streets: sandbags, concrete defensive walls and a security system run by uniformed Iraqi guards.
Journalists generally avoid using sport utility vehicles that have made contractors the targets of shooting or kidnap attempts, and generally use normal Baghdad taxis or regular saloon cars. Very few, apart from some television crews and major international newswire agencies, have armed protection.
Mr. Taggart was briefly taken to the offices of a U.S. news organization, where he spoke to his parents by phone, before being driven to the U.S. Embassy inside the heavily fortified green zone of central Baghdad.
After recuperation and a debriefing, he is expected to fly back to the U.S. rather than carry on his assignment.
---------
Official: 2 Attempts Made to Rescue Hostages
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28035-2004Oct12.html
Coalition personnel mounted two operations last month to rescue three men held hostage in Iraq but did not find them, a U.S. official said yesterday.
British civil engineer Kenneth Bigley and U.S. engineers Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and Jack Hensley were the targets of the rescue. They were kidnapped from their homes in Baghdad on Sept. 16.
The first operation came before Sept. 20, when Armstrong is believed to have been beheaded by his captors, the U.S. official said, discussing sensitive operations on the condition of anonymity. The second came after Armstrong's death but before that of Hensley, which was reported Sept. 21.
CNN reported U.S. forces found no signs of the three during each operation.
Bigley's killing was confirmed Sunday. Another U.S. official said there is credible information that Bigley tried to escape with the help of one of his captors but was recaptured and beheaded.
Tawhid and Jihad, led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the abductions and killings.
More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, some for ransom and others as leverage against the United States and its allies. Bigley was at least the 28th to be killed.
-------- israel / palestine
Arafat Relative Unhurt in Gaza Car Bombing
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28034-2004Oct12.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 12 -- A top Palestinian security leader who is related to Yasser Arafat escaped unharmed Tuesday when a booby-trapped car exploded near his convoy in Gaza City.
The bomb rocked Gaza City after nightfall as Moussa Arafat's convoy was leaving his headquarters. Arafat, a cousin of the Palestinian leader, was not hurt, security officials said.
Israel's military denied involvement. It appeared more likely that local opponents were responsible, though no one asserted responsibility for the attack. Palestinian riots torpedoed Yasser Arafat's attempt to appoint his cousin as head of security in Gaza in July.
In a statement, Moussa Arafat called the bombing an assassination attempt, but he did not name suspects. Last year he escaped injury in an explosion in his office, when he said his Palestinian enemies fired a rocket at the building.
--------
Israel Seizes Hamas Leader Accused of Organizing Attacks
October 13, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/middleeast/13CND-ISRA.html?hp&ex=1097726400&en=13ea45b61a3d05cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage
JERUSALEM, Oct. 13 - The Israeli military killed three Palestinian militants today as troops pushed into another town in the northern Gaza Strip, extending a two-week-old operation aimed at silencing Palestinian rocket fire.
The Israeli tanks and armored vehicles moved into Beit Lahiya, adjacent to the Jabaliya refugee camp, which has been the main focus of the Israeli forces.
The soldiers killed two armed members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and a militant from Hamas who was preparing an antitank missile, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses.
"The expansion of the operation proves we don't mean to let up," Israel's deputy defense minister, Zeev Boim, told Israeli Army radio.
Nonetheless, Palestinians fired two more rockets at Israeli communities just outside Gaza, though they caused no damage. An Israeli radar system, built to warn of incoming rockets, was put into service as intended for the first time today, sounding a siren about 20 seconds before the rockets landed, one in an open field in the West Negev and the other in a Palestinian area, the army said.
The rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip have fueled criticism of a plan by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to evacuate Jewish settlements in the coastal strip by the end of 2005.
In the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, a 10-year-old Palestinian girl, Ghadeer Jaber Mokheimer, died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said she sustained a day earlier while sitting at her desk in a school run by the agency.
The Israeli military said soldiers fired in the area on Tuesday in response to shelling by Palestinian mortars but were unaware that a girl had been shot. The military said it was investigating.
In a similar incident on Sept. 7, a 10-year-old Palestinian girl was hit by a bullet in the head at another school run by the refugee agency, in Khan Yunis. She died of her injuries two weeks later.
"That two young children have been shot and killed, sitting at their desks in U.N.R.W.A. schools in the last month, is horrific by anyone's standards," the head of the refugee agency, Peter Hansen, said in a statement.
In another case involving a girl killed by gunfire, the Israeli Army today suspended a platoon commander accused of firing multiple shots into the body of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who had already collapsed after being hit by Israeli gunfire.
The girl, Iman al-Hams, was shot on Oct. 5 as she approached an Israeli military outpost in the southern town of Rafah. Soldiers had suspected that she had a bomb in her bag, the military said, but her family said she was merely on her way to school and was carrying only books.
The military and the soldiers at the outpost have given conflicting accounts of the shooting, and the military has ordered an investigation.
Some soldiers have told the Israeli news media that the commander walked up to the fallen girl and fired his automatic rifle at her until his ammunition clip was empty. The commander has disputed that account. Palestinian doctors who saw Iman's body said she had been hit by at least 15 bullets.
In the West Bank town of Hebron, a senior Hamas figure, Imad Qawasmeh, surrendered after Israeli troops surrounded a house where he had been hiding and began to tear it down.
Israel says that Mr. Qawasmeh is the local leader of the Hamas faction, and that he orchestrated multiple attacks, including a double-suicide bombing on Aug. 31 that killed 16 Israelis on two buses in the southern town of Beersheba.
"Qawasmeh is a mass murderer whose hands are covered with the blood of many Israeli citizens," Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, said.
After surrounding the house where Mr. Qawasmeh was believed to be, a soldier on a loudspeaker called on the inhabitants to come out. All of them did, except for Mr. Qawasmeh, the military said.
As the military began to demolish the home, Mr. Qawasmeh emerged and soldiers ordered him to take off his clothes to ensure he had no hidden weapons. He complied and then knelt in the dirt before being blindfolded and taken away.
Mr. Qawasmeh is from a prominent Hebron clan that has been linked to numerous attacks against Israel. A number of clan members have been killed or arrested, and one carried out a suicide bombing last year.
An army spokeswoman described Mr. Qawasmeh as the head of Hamas in Hebron since 2003. "Since then, he was responsible for directing numerous suicide and shooting attacks in the areas of Jerusalem, Beersheba and Hebron, which resulted in the deaths of a very large number of Israelis," she said.
Mr. Qawasmeh belonged to a cell that manufactured explosive devices until 1994, when he was imprisoned by Israel, according to an army statement. After his release in 1999, the army said, "he became a significant figure in Hamas in Hebron and was leader of a wide net of terrorists."
Christine Hauser contributed reporting for this article from New York.
-------- mideast
Sectarian Tensions Simmer in Lebanon
Power-Sharing Pact Raising New Doubts
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28033-2004Oct12?language=printer
BAAQLIN, Lebanon -- This hilltop town of stone homes and olive trees was the scene of intense fighting during Lebanon's civil war, a harsh memory that has faded in the quiet, prosperous life that has endured here for more than a decade. But the arrest last month of Neameh Qayssamani, a newly elected member of the municipal council, and dozens of other men here in the Chouf Mountains recalled a fearful time most people believed had passed forever.
Qayssamani belongs to the largely Druze political party led by Walid Jumblatt, a former militia leader and leading critic of the move by parliament last month to extend the term of Lebanon's Christian president. Qayssamani was arrested by plainclothes police on Sept. 16 and spent the next three days in an interrogation cell in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, about 15 miles north of here. He said the government's message was clear: Jumblatt should hold his tongue, like the rest of Lebanon's cowed political class.
"They told me don't think I am special, because no one is," said Qayssamani, who was a foot soldier in Jumblatt's militia during the civil war and now lives in a small stone house here with his wife and five children. "They told me, 'Even if you were a minister, you wouldn't be special.' "
Then, on Oct. 1, Marwan Hamadi, a Druze from Baaqlin who had resigned his cabinet post to protest President Emile Lahoud's term extension, was gravely injured by a bomb that exploded in West Beirut as his car passed. His driver, a former soldier from a neighboring village, was killed. The next day, a government agent casually handed the driver's brother a large envelope holding his remains, something his family considered an insult.
To many Lebanese, the recent wave of harassment in the Chouf Mountains and violence on the streets of Beirut has revealed that the sectarian tensions and foreign powers that propelled the country's civil war for 15 years remain dangerous elements of political life.
Lebanon has prospered since a peace accord imposed order on its fractious political system 14 years ago, but political leaders have begun questioning whether the power-sharing agreement that ended the war remains a viable formula for governing the country. While no one is predicting renewed fighting, many Lebanese leaders say they fear a return of smaller-scale sectarian strife and delays to proposed reforms designed to salvage the country's dismal public finances.
Lebanon's political landscape is still dominated by the militia leaders who waged its civil war, and many of the old animosities remain close to the surface. The war pitted the Lebanese military and Christian militias against Palestinian guerrilla organizations fighting alongside armed groups from the country's Muslim majority. Israel, Iran, Syria and other countries vying for regional clout backed individual militias with money and guns.
Those alliances shifted frequently over the course of the fighting, which killed 150,000 Lebanese before a 1989 peace agreement guaranteed a more equitable distribution of power among the country's Christian president, Sunni Muslim prime minister and Shiite Muslim speaker of parliament. Under the agreement, the presidency ceded a share of power to the cabinet, which more broadly represents the country's various religious groups.
The peace agreement also envisioned the withdrawal of the thousands of troops that Syria sent to Lebanon in 1976 at the invitation of the country's Christian president. But as many as 20,000 Syrian troops remain in Lebanon, and their continuing presence is straining the political framework.
Tensions came to a head last month when the Lebanese parliament amended the constitution to allow Lahoud, a Maronite Christian, three more years as president. Leaders of the country's Sunni, Shiite, Druze and Christian communities spoke out against the extension, and Lahoud now faces a rising opposition that includes not only Jumblatt's party but some of his former Christian supporters.
The vote came a day after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution sponsored by the United States and France that tacitly called on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, disarm Hezbollah, a Shiite militia that operates here with Syrian approval, and cease meddling in the domestic politics of its smaller neighbor. But the international pressure, while welcomed by many Lebanese, has had little practical effect. In a speech Sunday in Damascus, the Syrian capital, President Bashar Assad called the resolution "blatant meddling" in Lebanese-Syrian affairs.
Many Lebanese leaders have praised Syria for helping solidify Lebanon's fragile peace. Jumblatt had been among them. But he said he had grown "fed up" with Syria's "intervention in all sectors of public life."
"This is primarily an internal matter of keeping a liberal democratic country with freedom of the press from becoming an Arab clone," Jumblatt said in an interview last week at his graceful home in Beirut. "We are mature, we can manage our own affairs. We are clever people. But Lahoud is not going to back down, and this is going to be a long struggle. We should expect more car bombs."
Western diplomats and Lebanese political figures, most of whom decline to speak publicly on the subject, say they believe that pro-Syrian forces inside Lebanon carried out the attack on Hamadi in league with Syrian intelligence. Senior Syrian officials have denied involvement.
"It's subversion on a massive scale, including threats and assassinations," a Western diplomat in Beirut said of the role of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon. "We've arrived at some uncertainty politically, and we are seeing them resort to tactics like this one."
The political formula has provided enough peace to allow the private sector to rebuild the country, spearheaded in large measure by the billionaire prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. His company has managed the multibillion-dollar reconstruction of downtown Beirut, the centerpiece of a thriving tourism industry.
But the sectarian political system mostly benefits its participants, and parties that emerged from disarmed militias are largely channels for patronage. Lebanon's countryside has received far less reconstruction aid than urban areas. The economy, while predicted to grow by 5 percent this year, is tilted heavily toward construction and tourism, leaving agriculture and industry with little help.
Corruption and inefficiency also have delayed scheduled privatizations of state industry, including that of the dilapidated power company. In recent weeks, Beirut has been without electricity for hours each day.
"What we are seeing now is the inability of the Lebanese political system to form an effective government to manage the country's affairs," another Western diplomat in Beirut said.
Reform plans have languished during the weeks-long standoff between Hariri, a Sunni, and Lahoud, the former head of the Lebanese army who draws much of his support from the armed services. Their animosity has deepened since Lahoud's term extension, which Hariri opposed until he was summoned to Damascus in late August.
"We are facing so many internal problems related to the financial situation of the government, not with the private sector," Hariri said in an interview at his palatial home last week. He declined to discuss his meeting with Assad but suggested that the relationships that have developed between Lebanese and Syrian officials would make removing Syria from national politics difficult.
"We're part of the problem -- don't forget that," he said. "This is a fragile democracy, and it needs to be strengthened."
Days after her brother was killed in the attack on Hamadi, Wafaa Abou Karoum sat clutching a tissue in a long row of women seated along one wall of the community center in the village of Mazaraat al-Chouf. Across from them sat a grim-faced line of village men, all of them observing a week-long mourning period for the town's slain son, Ghazi Abou Karoum. Thousands of people from various religions had filled the streets for Abou Karoum's funeral. Jumblatt was among them.
Wafaa Abou Karoum, weeping intermittently, appeared torn between reconciliation and anger as she talked about her brother's sudden death. "It is the leaders and big politicians who are trying to put obstacles between the different sects," she said. "If they would just leave the normal people to themselves, we would live happily."
In her next breath, she had a warning. "No one should try to come near Walid Jumblatt -- he is a mountain of fire," she said. "Let them stop trying to burn our hearts. We can't take that."
-------- nato
Rumsfeld To Appeal For NATO Aid in Iraq Training of Forces Is Issue at Forum
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28040-2004Oct12.html
POIANA BRASOV, Romania, Oct. 12 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other NATO defense ministers will meet in this small mountain resort on Wednesday to discuss increased training and contributions toward strengthening Iraqi security forces.
U.S. officials said they hope to persuade NATO members to accelerate the staffing of an Iraqi training center outside Baghdad and to provide more equipment to the operation.
While NATO approved the expansion of the facility and agreed to send about 300 personnel to train senior Iraqi military officers as part of an effort to protect upcoming elections, the issue has been controversial. France, Germany, Belgium and Spain opposed training soldiers in Iraq, citing security concerns and refusing to contribute forces. There were also worries that nations contributing NATO troops could become targets of violence.
Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told reporters on Tuesday that the defense ministers likely would consider broadening the alliance's work in Afghanistan -- where 7,500 NATO troops are involved in reconstruction operations. He said they also would discuss the 20,000-member NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. U.S. officials also are expected to talk about additional defense spending by member countries. The U.S. annual defense budget is about $417 billion, while the 25 other NATO nations spend a combined $200 billion.
Rumsfeld told reporters that NATO knows it needs to adapt to the global terrorism threat and is working to update its military structure for the 21st century.
"The end of the Cold War changed things, and the NATO members realized they are the military alliance on the face of the Earth," Rumsfeld said. He has been on a whirlwind trip through the Middle East and Eastern Europe since last week, spending a portion of his time discussing Iraq and global military cooperation with top officials from several countries.
Rumsfeld arrived in the Carpathian Mountains on Tuesday after meeting with Romanian leaders in Bucharest and having lunch with about two dozen Romanian veterans of the Iraq war. In the past few days, Rumsfeld has also met with troops and veterans from South Korea and Macedonia as part of an outreach to countries that have supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
U.S. defense officials hope to persuade other nations to begin shouldering more of the security load while the United States works to make Iraq's military self-sufficient. Rumsfeld has said several times during his trip, which included a day-long visit to various locations in Iraq, that he expects violence to escalate as planned January elections approach. So far, top U.S. generals there have not requested additional troops, but they have not ruled out making such a request.
--------
NATO Agrees to Deploy 300 Trainers to Iraq
October 14, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/international/middleeast/13cnd-natocnd.html
POIANA BRASOV, Romania, Oct. 13 -NATO defense ministers pledged today to speed the deployment of 300 trainers to Iraq by the end of the year, a program intended to field more Iraqi security forces who can help safeguard the elections in January.
A senior NATO official said the first wave of trainers, from countries like the United States, Britain, Denmark and Norway, could begin arriving at a new training academy southeast of Baghdad as early as late November. But other officials warned of delays in persuading NATO members to volunteer troops for the mission.
"Speed is of the essence here," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, said at a news conference in this small resort town in the Carpathian Mountains where the 26 alliance ministers are meeting. "It's what the Iraqis want."
Overall, about 3,000 NATO troops, including logistics, security, and command personnel, could be sent to support the training mission. Some nations, including France, Belgium and Germany, initially raised objections to NATO training Iraqis inside of Iraq, citing security concerns and a suspicion that the training could grow into a combat operation.
But those qualms have largely been addressed, NATO officials said. There are now about 40 NATO trainers in Baghdad, working mainly with senior Iraqi generals to establish national military command structures. The United States has been focusing largely on training Iraqi combat forces and British trainers have taken a leading role in training Iraqi national guard soldiers.
As a result, the NATO role will be mainly to train senior non-commissioned officers and more senior officers in command-and-control procedures. "Our niche will be leadership training," said a NATO diplomat. All training of Iraqi security forces will fall under Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus of the Army.
Nicholas Burns, the United States ambassador to NATO, told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that alliance trainers will be on the ground before the end of the year.
"As soon as those trainers are available, and we've identified them from the allied countries, they will go in, Mr. Burns said."
NATO members also discussed helping the interim Iraqi government equip its new army and security forces, a problem that has plagued the Iraqi forces' ability to conduct missions. In advance of the meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Rumsfeld issued a plea to other countries for help.
"We need more equipment, we need it from NATO nations, we need it from non-NATO nations, we need it gifted," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
At Wednesday's meeting, described as a discussion session rather than a decision-making forum, Mr. Hoop de Scheffer announced that military planners would begin drafting options for integrating the United States-led operation and NATO security mission in Afghanistan.
The options, which are likely to include keeping the combat and security missions separate but under one unified NATO commander, will be presented to alliance ministers at their meeting in Nice, France, in February.
Some European officials have expressed suspicion that the integration plan, which the Pentagon supports, could be used as a guise to withdraw some American troops from Afghanistan and shift them to Iraq. American officials have denied such a motivation.
As part of the allies' overall strategy for Afghanistan, NATO is planning to add two new civil-military teams, called provincial reconstruction teams, in western Afghanistan, bringing the total number of such units that provide security and economic spark in the country to 21. Seven of those teams would be run by NATO; the others by individual countries, mostly the United States. Canada and Italy expressed interest at the meeting in providing personnel for the new teams in the west, a senior NATO official said.
But as with the trainers for Iraq, NATO officials say, it has been like pulling teeth to get many member nations to commit forces to the Afghanistan mission.
Part of the problem is that many NATO members' militaries are still structured for the territorial defense missions of the cold war, and have been unwilling or unable to make the transition to the more agile, yet lethal, forces that can be sent quickly to hot spots beyond their national borders.
In addition to his NATO meetings today, , Mr. Rumsfeld met with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov of Russia, whom the secretary considers a close ally in developing counterterrorism strategies. It was the 15th meeting between the two men since Mr. Rumsfeld assumed his job in early 2001.
-------- pakistan / india
Ex-U.S. Detainee Now Leading Kidnappers
Militants Holding 2 Chinese Engineers in Pakistani Tribal Area; Al Qaeda Ties Alleged
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28039-2004Oct12.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 12 -- A former prisoner at the U.S. Navy facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thought to have forged ties with al Qaeda since his release, is leading a militant band whose members kidnapped two Chinese engineers in a lawless region of Pakistan near the Afghan border, officials said.
With Pakistani security forces deployed in the mountainous tribal area where the kidnappers are holed up, local leaders sought Tuesday to negotiate the release of the two Chinese, who were kidnapped Saturday. Both are engineers who were helping Pakistan build a dam.
The five kidnappers have strapped explosives to the hostages and threatened to kill them unless the militants are allowed safe passage to a nearby area where their leader, Abdullah Mehsud, is believed to be hiding, officials said.
"We will not accept this demand," Brig. Mahmood Shah, chief of security for Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions, said in a telephone interview. Shah said troops surrounded the kidnappers but were refraining from the use of force for the safety of the hostages.
Mehsud, 28, came to Pakistan in March after about two years of detention at Guantanamo Bay. He was captured by U.S.-allied Afghan forces in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan in December 2001 while fighting for the Taliban, Pakistani officials said.
It was not clear why U.S. authorities released Mehsud. After he returned to his tribal homeland in South Waziristan, he became a rebel leader and had opposed Pakistani forces hunting al Qaeda fighters in the semiautonomous area.
A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mehsud was believed to have recently forged ties with al Qaeda and was receiving financing from the group. Foreign militants, mainly from Uzbekistan, are loyal to Mehsud, the official said.
At least one other former Guantanamo detainee returned to his militant past. Abdul Ghaffar, an Afghan who fought for the Taliban, was released in 2002 after eight months in detention to become a commander for the Islamic militia in southern Afghanistan. He was killed by U.S. forces in a gun battle last month.
Pakistan's military has staged a series of offensives this year targeting al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan and claims to have broken up several hideouts and training camps. Dozens of guerrillas, soldiers and civilians have been killed in the fighting.
The remote region is also a suspected hiding place of Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, and his top lieutenant, Ayman Zawahiri, although there is no firm evidence on their whereabouts.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechen terrorists probed
October 13, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041013-121643-5028r.htm
U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.
A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.
"We don't know whether or not that report is true," this official said.
A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the intelligence report was provided by another government agency, but said Border Patrol agents were unable to verify its accuracy.
It could not be learned whether the reported infiltration is related to the recent Education Department warning to school officials to examine security in the aftermath of the attack last month by pro-Chechnya Muslim terrorists on a school in Russia, in which more than 300 people were killed and some 700 wounded.
In the Russian attack, heavily armed Islamists took over and wired with explosives the school building in Beslan, North Ossetia. It is believed that an accidental explosion set off a battle between Russian security personnel and the terrorists, who set off several explosions and shot schoolchildren and teachers as they tried to escape.
U.S. officials believe the Beslan terrorists included some al Qaeda-linked foreign terrorists.
The Education Department letter said that school officials should examine "protective measure guidance" for helping to prevent and respond to a similar terrorist attack, were it to occur in the United States.
The notice said the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are "currently unaware of any specific, credible information indicating a terrorist threat to public and private schools, universities or colleges in the United States."
The letter stated that indicators of terrorist surveillance before an attack include interest in site plans for schools, bus routes and attendance lists from persons who don't normally request such information.
Authorities also were advised to remain alert for "static surveillance" by people who may be disguised as panhandlers, shoeshiners, newspaper or flower vendors, or street sweepers who seem out of place in a particular area.
Other indicators of terrorist surveillance can include spying on school security drills, people staring at employees or vehicles in parking areas, and surveillance by pedestrians.
Fears of an attack on American schools also were raised by the recent discovery in Iraq of a computer disk containing data showing the layout of six schools in the United States, including districts in California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and Oregon.
Officials believed the disk may have been part of a terrorist plot. However, FBI officials said on Friday that there did not appear to be a terrorist threat connected to the computer disk.
The Iraqi who had the disk, a member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, apparently was collecting information from the Internet sites of American schools that would be useful for emergency planning for Iraqi schools, U.S. officials said.
U.S. security officials have been concerned in recent months that al Qaeda or other terrorists are planning to enter the United States from Mexico.
Intelligence officials said a suspected al Qaeda leader who has been in the United States was spotted recently in Mexico. Officials believe Adnan Shukrijumah, whom the FBI wants for questioning, met with alien smugglers in Mexico and Honduras and was seeking ways to bring al Qaeda members into the United States. Shukrijumah was seen in August in the Sonora province of northern Mexico, officials said.
Since October 2003, authorities have arrested five Arabs attempting to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico.
In July, officials dismissed as untrue an Internet report that said a group of Middle Eastern men were recently caught trying to cross the border from Mexico.
The report apparently was based on a group of Oaxacan tribesmen who were stopped as they tried to cross the border in Arizona. The tribesmen spoke an Indian language native to southern Mexico that may have been mistaken for Arabic, officials said at the time.
-------- war crimes
A Bosnian Serb Leader Faces War-Crimes Court
October 13, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/europe/13serb.html?pagewanted=all
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, Oct. 12 - The former chief of security for the Bosnian Serb Army appeared at the international war-crimes tribunal on Tuesday after Serbia handed him over, somewhat easing the country's tense relations with the European Union and United States.
The defendant, Ljubisa Beara, a former colonel, is one of 16 war-crimes suspects the court says has been sheltered by Serbia. He has been charged in the killing of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995. On Saturday, Serbia flew him to The Hague to face the tribunal.
The indictment against Mr. Beara accuses him of overseeing the beheading of from 80 to 100 men and boys near Srebrenica. The engineering unit under his command is also accused of overseeing the digging mass graves and flood-lighting areas so firing squads could execute their victims at night.
Although Mr. Beara is not the most important of the suspects sought by the tribunal - the former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic is widely viewed as the most significant - his transfer to The Hague was seen by Western diplomats in Belgrade as an essential first step to improving Serbia's difficult international relations. Serbia's failure to cooperate with the court has cost it a substantial amount in financial aid from the United States, and its application for European Union membership has been frozen over the issue.
Experts in Belgrade said the move appeared to be a gesture of good will, coming four days after a visit to Serbia by European Union's chief foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, and as well as the European Union's commissioner for external relations, Chris Patten.
While Serbia was being praised for its cooperation, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, criticized authorities in the United Nations-administered province of Kosovo for their lack of help in prosecuting ethnic Albanians accused of war crimes during the conflict in the region from 1997 to 1999.
"We have no help from anyone, neither from the international community in Kosovo nor the local authorities," Ms. Del Ponte.
A United Nations spokesman said Tuesday the mission had been taken by surprise at Ms. Del Ponte's comments and maintained that it had cooperated fully with the tribunal.
Milosevic Trial Resumes
By The New York Times
PARIS, Oct. 12 - The war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, resumed Tuesday after a month-long recess.
Judges had granted the extra time to give the two British lawyers named by the court to defend Mr. Milosevic, the former head of state of Serbia, the chance to prepare their case. The team has been contacting witnesses after many said they would not appear, expressing solidarity with Mr. Milosevic, who insists on having his right to defend himself restored. The court imposed two British lawyers after the trial had been interrupted numerous times because Mr. Milosevic's cardiologists said he was not fit enough to defend himself.
But the lawyers are left in a difficult position. Mr. Milosevic is refusing any contact with them, and at his request, they have had to appeal against their own presence.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Justices Agree To Hear 2 Cases On Display of Commandments
Court's 1980 Ruling On Subject Has Spawned Varying Interpretations
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26439-2004Oct12?language=printer
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will hear two cases involving the display of the Ten Commandments on government property, setting the stage for rulings on an issue that has divided the public and the lower courts for more than two decades.
In a brief order, the court said it would review a federal appeals court ruling that upheld a six-foot-tall monument to the commandments on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin, plus another ruling that barred an exhibition of the commandments with other historical documents in a Kentucky courthouse.
The court last addressed the subject in 1980, when it struck down, 5 to 4, a Kentucky law that required the posting of the commandments in public school classrooms. The court ruled that the law had "no secular legislative purpose."
Lower courts have since been the scene of protracted legal warfare as advocates of church-state separation have clashed with those who argue that the 1980 ruling does not bar all government-backed displays of the commandments.
"Given the amount of litigation surrounding this issue in recent years, it is not surprising that the Supreme Court would want to clarify often-conflicting rulings below," said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Lower courts have issued more than two dozen rulings in varying circumstances, but until yesterday the Supreme Court had refused to step in, turning down six petitions for review of the matter. One involved the case of Roy S. Moore, who was forced from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court last year after refusing a federal court order to remove a commandments monument from the state courthouse in Montgomery.
Now, however, the pressure for Supreme Court action appears to have become irresistible.
There are more cases in the court's pipeline. In addition to the Texas case, Van Orden v. Perry, No. 03-1500, and the Kentucky case, McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, 03-1693, there are three pending cases on the display of the commandments in public schools.
Politically, public display of the Ten Commandments is an issue that energizes the liberal and conservative bases of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.
Lawsuits to remove the commandments have often pitted the ACLU and its supporters against small-town governments backed by conservative religious legal groups. The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal advocacy group, says it is involved in 20 Ten Commandments cases in the lower courts, including one related to a monument to the commandments in Frederick.
Legally, the Supreme Court cases raise issues similar to those in the court's last high-profile brush with a church-state controversy: last term's challenge to the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, which schoolchildren recite at the beginning of each day.
The court ducked the issue at the heart of that case -- whether "under God" impermissibly crossed the church-state line -- and upheld the pledge on technical grounds.
Just as California atheist Michael A. Newdow argued that "under God" is an unconstitutional state-sponsored religious affirmation, opponents of public displays of the Ten Commandments argue that they impermissibly put an official imprimatur on one particular religious belief.
Backers of displaying the commandments say it is not necessarily a governmental religious statement, but rather, in the right context, an acknowledgment of the role Judeo-Christian norms played in the development of Western civilization and American law.
They note that a depiction of Moses carrying the Ten Commandments adorns the walls of the Supreme Court, in a frieze that includes Hammurabi, Solon and other historical lawgivers.
A similar point was made by supporters of "under God," including the Bush administration and congressional leaders from both parties.
In the Texas case the court granted yesterday, the state argues that its monument, placed among others on the capitol grounds, has no religious purpose or effect, but expresses the commandments' "historic and secular role as a foundational text for Western culture and legal codes."
In the Kentucky case, McCreary County responded to a lawsuit against a framed copy of the commandments in its courthouse by surrounding the Decalogue with an array of documents including the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta. This, the county maintains, shows the display's "secular purpose."
Separately yesterday, the court entered another religion-related area when it agreed to hear a case testing the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. That 2000 statute prohibits any "substantial burden on the religious exercise" of an institutionalized person unless the restriction is clearly justified and carefully limited.
The case involves charges by current and former Ohio state prisoners that officials denied them the freedom to practice Wicca and Satanism.
The prisoners said that the prison violated the legislation by denying them access to religious literature and to such "ceremonial" objects as medallions, and that this was a "substantial burden" on their free exercise of religion.
The Bush administration, which supports the legislation, had urged the court to take a different case on the same issue, but the court rebuffed that request.
In siding with the prison authorities, the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit struck down the law, ruling that it amounted to a government endorsement of religion.
The case is Cutter v. Wilkinson, No. 03-9877.
Staff writer Fredrick Kunkle contributed to this report.
--------
Top court to consider Commandments cases
October 13, 2004
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041013-123348-2672r.htm
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday agreed to consider two cases in the highly charged issue of whether the Ten Commandments can be posted in public buildings or public lands.
The decision to hear the Texas and Kentucky cases is a surprise, because last week the justices turned down an appeal from former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore. He was ejected from his position after he oversaw the installation of a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the state Judicial Building, then disobeyed his own court's ruling that the monument be removed.
"The court's announcement is a welcome surprise considering refusals in the past to hear such cases," said Tony Hileman, executive director of the American Humanist Association. "With conflicting lower court decisions, a Supreme Court assessment has become essential to protect constitutional separation of religion and government."
The first case, Van Orden v. Perry, involves a six-foot-tall, granite Ten Commandments monument placed on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1961. It is one of several monuments on the grounds.
Thomas Van Orden, a self-declared atheist who is homeless, sued Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and members of the State Preservation Board to remove the monument, saying his First Amendment rights were being violated.
Although the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Mr. Van Orden's suit in November, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year found that a Ten Commandments monument on the State House lawn in Elkhart, Ind., violated the First Amendment. The Supreme Court often accepts cases in which there is disagreement among the lower courts.
The other case, McCreary County v. the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, deals with whether the Commandments can be posted on the walls of two Kentucky courthouses.
In July and September 1999, two executive judges in Pulaski and McCreary counties posted copies of the Ten Commandments, on the grounds that the Commandments are the premier legal code for U.S. law. Posted with the Commandments were copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Mayflower Compact, a likeness of "Lady Justice" and the Bill of Rights.
When the ACLU filed suit in November 1999 to remove the framed copies of the Commandments, the judges said they were following Judge Moore's example. As a circuit court judge in Etowah County, Ala., from 1992 to 2000, Judge Moore had a copy of the Commandments posted above his bench. All efforts by the Alabama ACLU to get him to remove it were unsuccessful.
The judges also said the U.S. Supreme Court chambers include several Ten Commandments depictions: in the hands of a statue of Moses affixed to the outer west side of the building, on the lower portion of two large oak doors at the entrance of the courtroom and on a wall above where the justices sit.
Matthew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, which is representing the two Kentucky counties, said courts nationwide are divided on the issue. Four federal circuit courts and one state supreme court have upheld the constitutionality of posting the Commandments on public property, and three federal circuit courts have ruled against such displays.
"American history would be incomplete without reference or acknowledgment of the significant role religion, including the Ten Commandments, has played in our founding," Mr. Staver said.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said religious symbols belong in houses of worship, not public places.
"If government officials are eager to post something that deals with the foundation of American law, they need look no further than the U.S. Constitution," he said.
The justices also agreed to consider Cutter v. Wilkinson, over how far the state must go to accommodate religious preferences of prisoners. At issue is a 2000 federal law that protects the rights of prisoners. The law, known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), helps churches avoid restrictive zoning laws and helps inmates maintain religious rights.
In Cutter v. Wilkinson, a group of inmates - including a Wiccan, a Satanist, a minister of the racially separatist Christian Identity Church and others who follow a Viking religion with Thor as one of its gods - sued the Ohio prison system, saying they were being denied access to religious services guaranteed them under RLUIPA. John Cutter, one of the plaintiffs, is the satanist.
But in October 2000, the state moved to dismiss the inmates' accusations, saying RLUIPA is unconstitutional.
--------
Man Guilty in Case of Terror Ties
Federal Jury in N.Va. Convicts Former Businessman of Lying
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28109-2004Oct12.html
A federal jury yesterday convicted a former businessman of lying about his ties to a terrorist leader, marking the second time Soliman S. Biheiri has been found guilty in a sprawling probe into whether Islamic charities in Northern Virginia were financing terrorist organizations.
Biheiri, 52, was convicted of concealing his business connections to Mousa Abu Marzook, a leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, who has been designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. The federal jury in Alexandria deliberated for just two hours before reaching its verdict.
Biheiri was indicted in May on the Marzook charge and on separate counts of passport fraud and hiding his dealings with Sami al-Arian, a Florida college professor charged with being a leader of the terrorist group Palestine Islamic Jihad. A judge dismissed the al-Arian count, and Biheiri last week pleaded guilty to illegally possessing and using a U.S. passport to enter the country.
Last year, Biheiri, a native of Egypt, was convicted of lying under oath on his application for U.S. citizenship and was sentenced to one year in prison. Prosecutors are seeking a "terrorism enhancement" to stiffen the sentence for yesterday's conviction, arguing that he obstructed a federal terrorism probe.
If a judge accepts the enhancement at a hearing Oct. 29, prosecutors said, Biheiri could be sentenced to as much as 15 years in prison. If the judge declines, Biheiri probably will receive a year or less in jail and then is likely to be deported to Egypt.
Yesterday's conviction marked another step in the broad terrorism financing investigation. The government alleges that Islamic charities based in Northern Virginia and sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government invested nearly $4 million in BMI Inc., an investment firm that adheres to Islamic principles and was founded by Biheiri in New Jersey in 1986.
At Biheiri's sentencing in January on the earlier immigration conviction, prosecutors said the government believes that Biheiri was dispatched to the United States to start a financial organization as part of a plan to finance and support terror organizations.
The investigation drew widespread attention in March 2002 when federal agents raided companies operating in the 500 block of Grove Street in Herndon and elsewhere in Northern Virginia. The charities have strongly denied any terrorist links.
Prosecutors said during yesterday's closing arguments that the probe is large and complex, with federal agents at times having difficulty penetrating the finances of the Islamic organizations.
In his closing, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Laufman accused Biheiri of lying to federal agents by denying that he had any business ties to Marzook during interviews at Dulles International Airport in June 2003. Laufman said files retrieved from Biheiri's computer showed that Marzook had brought in more than $1 million in investment capital for BMI.
"The defendant showed contempt for the truth,'' Laufman told jurors.
Defense attorney David Schertler focused on the credibility of the agents who interviewed Biheiri, arguing that their handwritten notes did not reflect the alleged lies contained in their official report of the interview. He said Biheiri told the agents that records of his relationship to Marzook had been turned over to the FBI in a separate investigation in Chicago.
Prosecutors and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials called the conviction a key step in fighting terrorist financing. "This is an important victory for the government," U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said. Defense attorneys said only that they were disappointed with the verdict.
The probe also led to a guilty plea in July by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim activist who formerly headed several of the charities under investigation. Alamoudi pleaded guilty to moving cash illegally from Libya and admitted that he was involved in an elaborate Libyan plot to assassinate the de facto Saudi ruler. He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
-------- death penalty
Court to Hear Pleas On Executing Juveniles
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28102-2004Oct12?language=printer
Christopher Simmons was 17 on Sept. 8, 1993, when he and a 16-year-old accomplice broke into Shirley Crook's house, kidnapped her, drove her to a railroad trestle and threw her, bound and gagged, into the Meramec River. Crook's body surfaced the next day.
To the state of Missouri, this was not only a brutal crime but also a coldly calculated one, amply deserving of the death sentence a jury meted out.
But Simmons argues that he was a troubled youth at the time, emotionally unformed, impulsive and influenced by an older criminal mentor. To execute him, or anyone else, for a murder he committed while under the age of 18 would itself be an outrage -- a violation of the constitutional prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishment.
Today, lawyers for both sides will argue Simmons's case before the Supreme Court, as the justices take up an issue that has divided them and touched a nerve at home and abroad.
There are 72 juvenile offenders on death row, including 42 in Texas and Alabama. There have been 22 executions of juvenile offenders since 1976, 18 of them in Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma.
With the United States under fire in international human rights forums because it is the only democracy that still permits the death penalty for offenders younger than 18, the court's ruling will have both national and worldwide significance.
The court is being heavily lobbied by international organizations and dignitaries in this case, with the European Union, Nobel Peace laureates headed by former president Jimmy Carter and a group of former U.S. ambassadors urging an end to what they consider U.S. isolation on the issue.
Such considerations are relevant in the Simmons case, because the court weighs death penalty laws according to what a 1958 ruling called the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." The court looks to state legislation and jury verdicts to decide whether a "national consensus" has developed against a practice that was previously accepted -- but it has recently opened the door to world opinion as a measure of moral consensus.
In 2002, the court voted 6 to 3 to strike down the death penalty for the moderately mentally retarded, which it had upheld 5 to 4 in 1989. In the 2002 case, Atkins v. Virginia, the court noted that the number of death penalty states that ban the practice had grown from two in 1989 to 13 in 2002, while none had gone the other way.
The ruling also took account of the fact that within the "world community," capital punishment for the retarded was "overwhelmingly disapproved."
The court struck down capital punishment for offenders age 15 and younger in 1988, but the following year it upheld the death penalty for 16- and 17-year-old murderers by 5 to 4. At the time, only 12 of the 37 death penalty states banned the practice -- insufficient evidence, the court ruled, of a "national consensus" against it.
Simmons and his supporters argue that, as in Atkins, times have changed. Since 1989, the number of death penalty states that do not permit the death penalty for juvenile offenders has grown to 19, with no states lowering the age. Juries have imposed capital punishment less frequently.
Perhaps the most recent case to focus the debate was that of Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, one of two D.C.-area snipers. Despite prosecutors' pleas, a Virginia jury chose to sentence Malvo, who had had a troubled childhood and fallen under the strong influence of his adult accomplice, John Allen Muhammad, to life imprisonment without parole.
But Missouri's brief notes that the trend toward abolition involves only a few states, so the legislative head count is "not appreciably different" from what it was in 1989.
And the states of Alabama, Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia argue in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Missouri that the Malvo case demonstrates not that society has rejected the death penalty for minors, but that jurors can distinguish when it is merited and when it is not.
Opponents of the juvenile death penalty cite recent progress in brain-scan techniques that has permitted scientists to see that juveniles lack full development of brain areas responsible for impulse control and risk assessment.
Health organizations led by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association told the justices in a friend-of-the-court brief that to execute adolescents is to "hold them accountable not just for their acts, but also for the immaturity of their neural anatomy and psychological development."
But Missouri responds that "The variation in the maturation process minimizes the value of age, standing alone, as a basis for determining when capital punishment serves or fails to serve societal interest."
The Supreme Court agreed to address the juvenile issue only after years of evident reluctance.
As recently as April last year, while Malvo was still awaiting trial, the court granted Oklahoma's request to reinstate the death sentence of a 17-year-old offender after it had been blocked by a federal appeals court.
In 2002, the court refused to hear two appeals from under-18 offenders asking it to reconsider their penalties in light of Atkins.
Two of these three cases came to the court under special rules that would have required five votes rather than the usual four to hear them. But four justices who oppose the death penalty for minors could not muster a fifth vote, which they protested publicly.
"We should put an end to this shameful practice," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a 2002 dissent joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
The justices had little choice but to hear the Simmons case, however, because it comes to them as the state's appeal from a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that explicitly refused to follow the 1989 precedent and decided that the logic of Atkins dictates the abolition of the juvenile death penalty. They could not ignore such a challenge to their authority by a state court.
Given that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas opposed Atkins, the case is likely to be decided by the court's two swing voters, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy.
They voted to uphold the death penalty for 16- and 17-year-olds in 1989, along with the death penalty for the mentally retarded; but they voted in the majority in Atkins.
Today's case is Roper v. Simmons, No. 03-633.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Cyber-Security to Get Higher-Profile Leader
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28019-2004Oct12.html
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday that the role of overseeing computer security and the Internet should have a higher profile at the agency, in the face of increasing concern from technology executives and experts that cyber-security is getting inadequate attention.
Ridge told an industry council that advises the White House that the agency was creating a new position of assistant secretary to be responsible for both cyber- and telecommunications security, according to two executives who heard the remarks.
But hours later, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that despite Ridge's comments, final details on the title and responsibilities of the elevated position had not been decided. An administration source who spoke on the condition of anonymity later said Ridge misspoke; the job will instead be deputy assistant secretary.
Cyber-security has been a flashpoint ever since the Department of Homeland Security was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Before then, a cyber-security office was an integral part of the White House. The decision to move it was regarded by many in the technology security industry as a downgrade of the issue's importance by the Bush administration.
Although no full-scale cyber-attacks have occurred, terrorists make extensive use of the Internet for everything from passing messages to transferring money. And because so many networks interconnect, cyber-security experts warn that a weak link in one place could be exploited and threaten major avenues of commerce.
Moreover, attacks by apolitical but malicious hackers against governments, businesses and consumers have continued unabated, costing companies and individuals tens of millions of dollars a year.
The controversy over how best to handle cyber-security reached a boiling point on Oct. 1, when Amit Yoran, head of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, quit in frustration over his inability to get the department to be more aggressive on the issue.
Yoran had reported to Robert P. Liscouski, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection, and was not responsible for telecommunication networks, which are the backbone of the Internet. Liscouski has staunchly resisted calls for giving cyber-security separate attention, arguing that it should be integrated with all other security considerations.
If the department were to create an assistant secretary position for cyber-security, Liscouski would be responsible only for other physical infrastructure.
Before Homeland Security issued its statement, Ridge's remarks met with wide acclaim. Yoran called the change "a fantastic move" and evidence that the department is able to change its operations to meet the mounting cyber-threat.
Paul Kurtz, head of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, said it was "a solid development."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who along with Rep. William M. "Mac" Thornberry (R-Tex.) sponsored House legislation to elevate the cyber-security job, said it would be "good news for a more secure America."
--------
Dayton Closes Senate Office, Cites Threats
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28030-2004Oct12.html
Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) said yesterday that he was closing his Capitol Hill office because of security concerns in what appeared to be an atypical response to intelligence information that has been shared with senators about terrorist threats.
Senate leadership aides said they knew of no other senator who plans to follow Dayton's example. Sergeant-at-Arms William H. Pickle scheduled a meeting today for senators' chiefs of staff to assure staffers that there are no new threats, according to the aides.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, issued a statement saying that he had also received briefings about security threats but saw no need to "take extraordinary steps such as those announced by Senator Dayton."
Dayton closed his office in the Russell Building across the street from the Capitol, and moved his staff to Minnesota and to office space off Capitol Hill. He said his Senate office will be closed while Congress is in recess until after the Nov. 2 elections.
"I do so out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise visit my office in the next few weeks," Dayton said in a statement announcing the closure.
Dayton said he could not disclose the contents of what he described as a "top-secret intelligence report" presented to senators by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). But he added that he based his decision on a "careful review of all available documents" and decided to act on his own after Frist declined to convene a meeting of all senators to discuss the subject.
But several sources said other senators who attended briefings on the report did not come away with the same conclusion as Dayton did. U.S. intelligence officials have described the information as serious but vague, lacking specifics about the time or location of a possible attack.
The briefings were given on Capitol Hill by officials of the CIA and of a joint CIA-FBI agency that performs intelligence analysis, according to a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The briefers presented one particularly alarming scenario in which al Qaeda would launch multiple simultaneous attacks on the United States using weapons of mass destruction, and would overwhelm the U.S. government, the official said. This description was presented as a "worst-case scenario" -- just one in a range of possibilities, the rest of which were less worrisome, the official said.
"We're unaware of any credible threat information indicating al Qaeda is targeting a specific location in Washington or the United States," said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "Homeland Security has not made any recommendation for any member of Congress or other official in Washington to vacate their offices."
Staff writers Dana Priest and John Mintz contributed to this report.
--------
Airport Security Screeners Overworked, Report Says
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28018-2004Oct12.html
The nation's 45,000 federal airport-security screeners suffer from low morale, understaffing and excessive overtime, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.
The report, released yesterday, comes as the agency said it faces a 22 percent attrition rate, compared with 15 percent last year. Before the federal government took over the screener workforce, private companies that ran security checkpoints typically incurred staff turnover of 100 percent a year.
The report focused on working conditions among screeners employed by private companies under an experimental program at five airports.
Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin said his report did not find many differences between the federal workers and those employed by private companies. In an earlier report, he said the performance of both groups of workers was "equally poor" in detecting weapons hidden by inspectors at the security checkpoints. The same was true of the workers' level of training, supervision and job satisfaction, Ervin said yesterday. "There really was no difference."
Ervin's report details a Transportation Security Administration bureaucracy that seemed unresponsive to local airport directors who pleaded at times to hire and train more security screeners. The agency sent out software to train screeners how to detect weapons inside luggage. Screeners learned to recognize fake weapons in baggage, but the software was not updated to test them with new images.
"As a result, screeners eventually memorized the threat images, rendering the training software ineffective," the report says. The report was released a month before airport directors will be allowed to choose to return to a private screener workforce.
TSA spokesman Mark O. Hatfield Jr. said the agency has since changed the way it manages the screeners, and airports now have the ability to hire and train local people instead of awaiting direction from headquarters. The management difficulties described in the report were "part of the nature of how the agency was organized at that time," Hatfield said.
Hatfield attributed the higher attrition rates in part to the overtime that screeners were asked to work this summer as passengers returned to flying in numbers not seen since before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "It makes sense because we've had a long, tough summer," Hatfield said.
--------
Internal Report Targets Port Security Work
Associated Press
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
October 13, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4549018,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Homeland Security Department's independent investigator has concluded that federal inspectors of oceangoing shipping containers still need to improve their detection equipment and search procedures to prevent terrorists from sneaking weapons of mass destruction into U.S. ports.
In a report to be released Thursday, the department's inspector general acknowledges that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has made security changes and has others planned.
Clark Kent Ervin said he still has recommendations to improve the equipment that detects threatening cargo, such as nuclear material, and make inspection procedures more effective.
Details were not made public in the unclassified report, obtained in advance by The Associated Press.
``Improvements are needed in the inspection process to ensure that weapons of mass destruction or other implements of terror do not gain access to the U.S through oceangoing cargo containers,'' Ervin wrote.
Texas Rep. Jim Turner, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said the government needs to put specialized radiation monitors at all U.S. ports and have enough people to physically inspect cargo containers that set off radiation alarms.
While improvements in cargo inspection have been made since the Sept. 11 attacks, less than 5 percent of containers are inspected.
``We all know that the No. 1 threat faced by the American people is a nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist,'' Turner said. ``It illustrates what a wide gap there is in the rhetoric of protecting the homeland and the reality of what we are actually doing. It is one security gap that has got to be closed.''
Turner and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., requested the report after an ABC News team smuggled 15 pounds of depleted uranium into the United States in 2002 and 2003. ABC cited experts who said that shielded depleted uranium had the same signature as shielded weapons-grade uranium - a finding that the agency has rejected.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy cast doubt on the validity of the ABC experiment, saying that depleted uranium is used in everyday items, including elevators and jets. He said it does not carry risks, unless it is heated to a point that microscopic pieces can be inhaled.
The inspector general said senior scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory concluded that the Homeland Security agency now has tools that can detect both depleted uranium and highly enriched uranium that could be used in a weapon, but the ability to sense them is reduced in certain conditions. Those conditions were not publicly disclosed.
Ervin's report makes recommendations to improve the equipment, but they were not disclosed. The report also urges better training and search procedures to be followed by cargo inspectors.
Today, if a container creates an alert, Murphy said experts at the always open National Targeting Center work with inspectors at the ports to determine if there is a problem. He said everyday items, including dirt and bananas, are known to set off alarms.
--------
Officials say schools not affected by scare
RFH not target of terror attacks, parents told
atlanticville
BY LAYLI WHYTE
October 13, 2004
http://atlanticville.gmnews.com/news/2004/1013/Front_Page/001.html
Officials of the Long Branch and Ocean Township school districts, and Shore Regional High School, said Tuesday their schools have not been impacted by security concerns at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School in Rumson.
"[Security in the schools] started with the Columbine incident," said John Lysko, the Ocean Township assistant superintendent of schools. "Ocean Township was in the forefront of developing security and management plans. We have had lockdown procedures, evacuation procedures and enhanced security procedures since Columbine [1999] and it has been upgraded as a result of 9/11."
Over the summer the schools underwent construction and renovation, according to Lysko, who said since the alert at Rumson-Fair Haven, the police department has conducted walk-through inspections.
Last week, local and state law enforcement officials met with parents, teachers and concerned residents at RFH to explain the facts behind media reports that a CD with information about Rumson schools was recovered from the body of an Iraqi insurgent killed in Baghdad in July.
Lysko said the school system is confident about the security in the district's five schools.
"We reassessed the security program in a way that promotes physical and emotional safety," he said.
Long Branch Superintendent of Schools Joseph M. Ferraina said the city school district has been at a heightened alert for a period of time and has different plans available for different situations, but no new measures have been taken.
"We were given this information [about RFH] a while back," Ferraina said. "We are cooperating with agencies and doing the best we can to prevent anything from happening."
Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch has also taken no special steps with regard to security since it the information about RFH was disclosed.
Leonard G. Schnappauf, the school's superintendent/principal, said the high school has only done what it always does at the beginning of every school year - practice security lockdown and evacuation procedures.
Schnappauf said the floor plan of the high school is not posted on its Web site.
On the Web site, he said, is the code of conduct for students and other information for parents.
"There's nothing on the Web site that would be considered strategic or would put our students in jeopardy," he said.
This week, however, Rumson school officials were talking video cams, ID cards and lock-ups after last week's revelations.
Dr. Gregg Hauser, interim superintendent of the Rumson school district, took over his new post on Monday of last week and had only been on the job for five days when this information was made public Friday by the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office.
Hauser said Monday that the regional high school and borough school districts are taking steps to increase safety in the schools, including implementing a buzzer and security camera at the front doors of both Deane-Porter Primary and Forrestdale Middle schools, so that visitors will be screened before they are allowed into the building.
"As far as I am concerned and as far as the [Board of Education] is concerned, it's a done deal," said Hauser, adding that the next step is to go out to public bid for the system.
Besides the buzzer and camera system, the district is also discussing identification cards for faculty and staff; lock-up, meaning keeping all doors except the front door locked at all times and having doors open only from the inside; and improvements to the way the school district communicates with parents.
The district's Crisis Response Booklet, which outlines what the schools are to do in the event of a crisis, is also being critiqued, he said, and changes made where necessary.
Hauser, in a telephone interview Monday, also confirmed that local, county and state police units were deployed to RFH High School and the Rumson elementary and middle schools on Sunday.
"They conducted a thorough, thorough search," he said.
Bomb-sniffing dogs and the Rapid Response Team were part of the search for potentially harmful devices in the schools and on school grounds that could have been planted by terrorists.
The units sent to the schools included N.J. Task Force 1, Urban Search and Rescue Team (including structural engineers and planning specialists), N.J. State Police, K-9 units, Arson Bomb Unit, Technical Emergency and Mission Specialist (SWAT), OEM Regional Coordinator and NJSP Infrastructure Security Unit.
According to a press release from the Rumson Police Department, "The results of today's activities supported the previous findings that the school buildings were found to be safe and secure for Rumson students and faculty."
Although officials, including county Prosecutor John Kaye, hold that there is no immediate threat, the districts decided to take the security measures, Hauser said, to address the concerns of the parents who attended a town hall meeting at RFH on Friday.
Hauser said he met with his staff on Monday morning to review comments made at the meeting held to allay concerns that terrorists might have had their sights on RFH.
At the Friday meeting, at least 200 parents, students and teachers showed up to hear a team of local, county, state and federal law enforcement officials explain the truth about reports that information about the school, including floor plans, was on the CD recovered by U.S. forces in July.
Those assembled also took the opportunity to voice their concerns about how safe the schools are and to ask why parents were not informed of the situation earlier. The overflow crowd in the RFH gymnasium filled not only the bleachers but several rows of chairs, and some people were standing along the walls.
The meeting was called by the heads of both Rumson school districts, and speakers included Kaye and the Director of the state Office of Counter-Terrorism, Sidney J. Caspersen. Also in attendance were members of local law enforcement agencies, including Rumson Police Chief Edward A. Rumolo.
Kaye told those assembled that the information about the recovered CD had been classified as top secret by the U.S. Army and that he was only given the information in order to bolster security around the school.
He told those in attendance that it is believed that the Iraqi man retrieved the information about the Rumson schools on the Internet, which also led to the information about the other schools.
Kaye said that after the school shootings in Littleton, Colo., in 1998, local schools were asked to put floor plans online so that law enforcement officials could access them in case of a similar event. Now, schools are being asked to take that information off their Web sites, he said.
Many parents at the meeting on Friday complained about the districts' failure to communicate the news from the Prosecutor's Office that was rapidly disseminated by the media.
"The school never called," said Fair Haven resident Mikki Brett, McCarter Avenue, a mother of two RFH students. "The kids are really spooked. We're just here to see if they can tell us anything."
Brett said that although Fair Haven's reverse 911 call system did dial her house, she was only able to hear part of the message on her answering machine. She and her husband found out about the incident because one of his co-workers brought in a newspaper that carried the story.
"Our snow chain works faster than this did," one concerned parent commented at the meeting.
Dr. Robert Smith, RFH superintendent, said that in addition to the reverse 911 call, e-mails were sent out informing parents of the situation and the time of the meeting. Students were also given handouts to bring home, stating that there was no threat to the school but that concerns would be addressed at the meeting.
The Bretts said they never received an e-mail from the school.
According to Caspersen, who spoke on Friday, the reason the public was informed last week was because the story had been leaked to the media.
Caspersen told those assembled at RFH that the CD had information about several schools, including two in New Jersey - Franklinville in Gloucester Country and Rumson-Fair Haven High schools - and two in California and one each in Michigan, Oregon, Georgia, and Florida.
At a press conference earlier that day, Kaye told reporters the CD was recovered from the body of an Iraqi physicist, the son of a member of the Ba'athist Party that deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein formerly controlled, and that the man's father had a strong connection to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
The information pertaining to RFH did not include floor plans, but did contain information about the school's vandalism and bullying policies, Caspersen said.
The CD also contained information about radon and depleted uranium, according to Kaye.
Both Kaye and Caspersen were adamant in making the point that the reason parents, teachers and students were not informed earlier was because there was no immediate threat to the school or to students. Caspersen repeatedly told the crowd that if there had been an immediate threat to the school, they would have been informed as soon as possible.
"I spend my whole waking, living day thinking about terrorism. In my world," said Caspersen, "we do not take anything for granted. You would not be withheld information if there was a real threat."
Kaye said that the county school superintendent also was not informed of the threat until the information had already been leaked.
It was not until Sept. 16, Kaye said, that he was informed about the CD. At the time, he said he believed there were floor plans for RFH on the CD, and it was not until recently that he found out the truth about the information from an FBI agent.
Caspersen said he was given the information on Sept. 4 and was told not to reveal it, just as he told Kaye in mid-September not to reveal it to anyone who did not need to know. Kaye told Smith only one week before the information was leaked to the media.
"Local law enforcement knew what I knew," said Kaye.
Once Smith was given the information, extra security was put in place around the schools, Rumson police were placed around the school, and bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in to check the school and the construction site on the grounds for the new geo-thermal heating and cooling system being installed.
Caspersen said that the recent terrorist incident at a school in Beslan, Russia, in which 300 people were killed, half of them students, was the perfect cover for the increased security, since RFH, like the Russian school, has construction under way.
Both superintendents said Friday that they are confidant that the Rumson schools are secure and that there will be continued efforts to bolster security to keep them safe.
-------- immigration / refugees
Phoenix targets alien smugglers
October 13, 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041012-101451-4664r.htm
PHOENIX (AP) - Law-enforcement officials in the Phoenix area are using new tactics to cut off illegal immigration by going after used-car salesmen who sell vehicles to smugglers and by arresting operators of safe houses where immigrants stay after crossing the border.
Unlike past crackdowns, which have focused on stopping immigrants at the border, immigration officials say the new campaign frustrates smugglers by zeroing in on the tools of their trade.
And so far, they say, it seems to be working in Phoenix, the nation's hub for transporting illegal workers throughout the country.
"Now, we really are bringing the focus on putting the organizations out of business through arresting, prosecuting and convicting the controls people," said Mike Turner, who heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Phoenix. "The endgame is putting the organizational leaders in jail."
Smugglers, also known as "coyotes," typically charge thousands of dollars per person to sneak immigrants across the border, either by foot or hidden in vehicles. Once across, many are taken to hiding places known as "drop houses," where they often stay for months before fanning out across the country to look for work.
For years, many smugglers stole cars to carry migrants from the border to the Phoenix area. But recently, used-car salesmen began selling cars to smugglers with fake liens and names on the titles, so if the car is seized near the border, it reverts to the dealer.
The dealers then resell the car to the smugglers, a practice that has allowed many dealers to increase their revenue fivefold, said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. Police said they were tipped off to the scheme by a tow-truck operator.
Nearly two dozen used-car lot workers in the Phoenix area recently were indicted on charges of forgery and money laundering. Police also seized 11 car lots and 400 vehicles.
"A really critical link has been broken," Mr. Goddard said. Also in the past year, immigration authorities arrested 282 persons and charged most of them with alien smuggling by operating drop houses in and around Phoenix.
The Phoenix metropolitan area became a hotbed of drop houses partly because it was so easy for smuggling operations to blend into largely Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.
Mr. Turner said immigration agents did not put an emphasis on the drop-house operators in the past, which frustrated local officials who were left to deal with the problem.
Police think the number of drop houses has decreased sharply since the crackdown began. Some smugglers still use Phoenix as a base of operations, but authorities think many have moved elsewhere, including Los Angeles, Houston, Las Vegas and rural communities in Arizona.
Some say although the new tactic might be effective in Phoenix, it does not confront the larger problem.
"It's going to be a short-lived celebration, because you will start to see the manifestation of the broken system in other places," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the pro-immigrant group National Immigration Forum.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Father Denounces Hamdi's Imprisonment
Son Posed No Threat to U.S., He Says
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28108-2004Oct12.html
The father of Yaser Esam Hamdi yesterday criticized the U.S. government for holding his son in solitary confinement as an "enemy combatant" for nearly three years but praised the Supreme Court decision that led to Hamdi's release Monday.
"It was totally unfair that he was there for so long and in a prison cell by himself," Esam Hamdi said in a telephone interview from the family home in Saudi Arabia, which was crowded with friends and well-wishers. He said his son never posed a threat to the United States and went to Afghanistan, where he was captured in 2001 with a Taliban military unit, only to do relief work.
But Esam Hamdi thanked the Supreme Court for the June ruling that allowed his son to challenge his detention. "That tells me the American justice system is a fair system, and I really appreciate the Supreme Court's fairness in Yaser's case," said the elder Hamdi, who also thanked his son's attorneys and "the American people, because we know that many people thought Yaser was treated unfairly."
The U.S. government freed Yaser Esam Hamdi, 24, and flew him home to his family Monday, ending a three-year case that became one of the prime legal battlegrounds in the war on terrorism. The release followed intensive negotiations between Hamdi's attorneys and the government and a two-week delay caused by concerns the Saudi government raised about the deal.
A federal judge in Norfolk officially dismissed the case against Hamdi on Monday, a decision that appeared on the court docket yesterday. U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar had ordered the government to produce Hamdi at a hearing yesterday if he had not been released.
Hamdi initially was held at Guantanamo Bay along with other detainees until authorities learned that he was born in Louisiana, where his father had been working as a petroleum engineer, and was a U.S. citizen. After that, he was held in military brigs.
Government attorneys justified Hamdi's detention with a Defense Department declaration that he had joined a Taliban military unit, received training and acknowledged loyalty to the Taliban. Yesterday, in response to the comments by Hamdi's father, a Pentagon spokesman said Hamdi was detained "because of the threat he posed to the United States and the intelligence value he possessed due to his involvement with a Taliban military unit."
The spokesman, who would not give his name, said Hamdi was released because he no longer was a threat.
But Esam Hamdi said his son "has nothing at all against America and absolutely was never a threat to America." He said Yaser Esam Hamdi was in Afghanistan for less than two months before being captured and was merely "in the wrong place at the wrong time." He would not elaborate.
The elder Hamdi declined to make his son available for an interview but said he is "doing fine and feeling great that he is home. We were praying to Allah to get him home, and we always knew this day would come."
While Esam Hamdi said the family is looking forward, he criticized the federal appeals court that sided with the government in the Hamdi case. The Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had ruled that the military -- not the courts -- had sole authority to wage war and that courts should defer to battlefield judgments.
But in June, the Supreme Court ruled that although the government had the authority to detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, Hamdi had the right to contest his detention in court.
"I don't think the 4th Circuit did a fair job," Hamdi's father said. "They were not listening to the case."
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
How Tax Bill Gave Business More and More
October 13, 2004
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/business/13corptax.html?ei=5094&en=0d6532cdc299c69a&hp=&ex=1097726400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Senator Charles E. Grassley needed every possible vote to pass his mammoth corporate tax bill. So he was more than willing to accept Zell Miller's plea on behalf of imported ceiling fans.
Senator Miller, the Georgia Democrat who became a Republican hero at the party's convention with his impassioned denunciation of Senator John Kerry, was determined to help Home Depot, the home-improvement chain based in Atlanta. And Home Depot, which sells about half of all ceiling fans in the United States, wanted an end to the tariff on imported fans, most of them from China.
On Monday, everybody involved was a winner. The Senate gave final approval to Mr. Grassley's bill, which would shower $137 billion in tax breaks into every corner of industry. While the bill's primary purpose is to bolster American manufacturers, it will also help Chinese ceiling-fan companies by eliminating $44 million in tariffs over the next two years. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.
The Home Depot provision is just one tiny example of how the need to solve a narrow tax problem in 2002 gave birth to the biggest free-for-all in corporate lobbying that Congress has experienced in nearly 20 years.
The story began nearly three years ago, with an initial impetus simply to replace a $5 billion annual tax break for American exporters that the World Trade Organization had ruled was illegal. It ended this week with a 633-page behemoth that offers new tax giveaways to everyone from corporate titans like Boeing and Hewlett-Packard to an array of oil and gas producers, shopping mall developers, wine distributors, even restaurants. Many companies, like General Electric and Dell, are likely to end up with far more tax relief under the new bill than they had ever received from the old tax break. Some, like Exxon Mobil, never qualified for the old tax break at all but will enjoy tax savings now.
Even the "losers" came away with something. Movie executives are complaining that they were punished at the last minute, when House Republicans stripped out about $1 billion worth of tax credits, in part because the industry is closely identified with the Democratic Party. But they still held on to $336 million in tax breaks for movies made in areas with high unemployment.
Similarly, the final bill would also raise more than $60 billion by cracking down on major tax shelters and punishing companies that try to avoid American taxes by moving their headquarters outside the country. But in a gesture of mercy to a handful of oil service companies from Texas, House Republicans gave a green light to companies that moved offshore before March 4, 2003. The beneficiaries of that decision include the Noble Corporation, Weatherford International, Cooper Industries and Nabors Industries - all in or near the district of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.
"It was a perfect storm for pork, in that they added all these provisions that were really important to lawmakers in an election year,'' said Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan public-interest group in Washington. "It will take days, if not months, to figure out everything that's in here.''
Within the Washington Beltway, the political logic was in many ways predictable. What was not predictable was how brazen and open the frenzy would ultimately become.
House and Senate leaders knew from the start that any attempt to tinker with corporate taxes would set off intense lobbying, as every major company and every industry association scrambled to protect existing preferences and push for new ones.
After nearly two years of feuding among rival interest groups, the House and Senate both passed bills this year that would essentially replace the old tax break with rate cuts on profits from domestic manufacturing.
But under heavy pressure from big multinational corporations, both chambers also included about $42 billion worth of tax reductions on the foreign earnings of companies based in the United States.
Corporate executives defended the tax cuts on foreign profits, saying that American companies were at a competitive disadvantage because most other countries tax profits earned only inside their borders.
To build support for their bills, House and Senate leaders openly invited lawmakers and industry groups to draw up their own wish lists for special tax provisions. By last spring, the Senate bill had ballooned to more than 700 pages.
It suddenly included billions of tax breaks for oil and gas companies and renewable energy that had been in last year's energy bill, which collapsed amid bitter partisan and industry feuding in November 2003.
One of those provisions was Home Depot's tariff reduction on ceiling fans, which was slipped into the House's tax bill this summer and agreed to by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, to please Mr. Miller.
The bill also greatly expanded the traditional definition of "manufacturing,'' enabling a much greater range of companies to qualify for tax reductions.
Under pressure from the Bechtel Corporation, the engineering contractor, for example, Senate leaders included engineering as a form of manufacturing. They also included any companies involved in timber and the "extraction'' of minerals, which extended fresh benefits to companies like Exxon Mobil and BP Amoco, as well as electric companies.
Meanwhile, lawmakers pressed hard to win approval for pet tax breaks that had been lying around for years but rejected on previous occasions. Among the items that made it into the final bill were a $9 million tax reduction on bows and arrows; $27 million in tax breaks on gambling income of foreigners at American horse-racing and dog-racing tracks; and $11 million in reduced excise taxes on fishing tackle boxes, a longtime pet project of J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, whose district includes a big producer of tackle boxes.
Given the need to pass some sort of bill, if only to spare the costly, escalating sanctions on exports imposed by the W.T.O. to force compliance, every tax lobbyist in town was engaged in the fight to win something for their clients and block changes that might cost them money. That stretched out the process.
"It's always difficult when you have a finite pie that you're trying to divvy up,'' said Donald G. Carlson, a former chief of staff on the House Ways and Means Committee who lobbied for numerous provisions in the bill. "When you have to pick winners and losers within the corporate community, that is always a messy process that Congress is reluctant to undertake.''
House and Senate leaders were stalled for months by feuding, made all the more difficult as the combination of tax breaks in both the House and Senate versions vastly outstripped the money to pay for them.
Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, rejected most of the energy tax breaks included in the Senate bill.
But one provision that he included was Mr. Miller's tariff reduction for ceiling fans. Strictly speaking, the tariff reduction had nothing to do with taxes and would, if anything, make life harder for American companies competing with the imports. Mr. Miller argued that the tariff was pointless because there were no American ceiling fan manufacturers, and that there had not been any for many years. In the meantime, he contended, retailers like Home Depot were forced to charge higher prices.
Mr. Thomas, often known for scathingly denouncing "extraneous" provisions in his tax bills, quietly supported the ceiling fan provision in the certain knowledge that Mr. Grassley on the Senate side would go along.
One reason may well have been Mr. Miller's passionate denunciation of his own Democratic Party in a recent book as well as his keynote speech at the Republican convention.
Amid all the horse trading, the biggest deal involved tobacco farmers and cigarettes. Knowing he needed at least some Democratic votes, Mr. Thomas added in a provision in the summer that would create a $10 billion buyout program for tobacco farmers.
Tobacco state lawmakers had been pushing for such a buyout for years, because demand for tobacco and the value of tobacco-growing quotas had been declining for years.
The tobacco deal created a sensation in North Carolina, where Republicans and Democrats are in a tight race to capture the Senate seat being vacated by John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate.
The Senate, pressed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, voted to link the tobacco buyout with a historic change that would subject cigarettes and other tobacco products to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. But House Republicans adamantly rejected any new regulation for cigarettes, omitting the provision in a conference bill last week and easily defeating Senate attempts to put it back in.
"I got a lot of calls from people in Ohio who were very concerned that the bill might not pass,'' said Senator Mike De Wine, Republican of Ohio, who fought for tobacco regulation. "But to me it was a bigger principle."
It remains unclear how soon all the trouble will actually solve the original problem, which is that the European Union is imposing punitive tariffs on up to $4 billion worth of American exports as long as the old tax break remains in force.
The new bill would eventually eliminate the tax break, but it would provide a "transition period'' lasting several years, which may leave it still technically in violation of the trade organization's ruling.
European officials are ultimately expected to go along, but they have been coy. On Monday, Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner, said simply, "We will now carefully study the details in the final compromise.''
-------- propaganda wars
For the Record
Bush's Health Care Ads Not Entirely Accurate
Campaign Offers Little Backing for Claims
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28123-2004Oct12.html
President Bush charged in a pair of television ads yesterday that John F. Kerry's health care plan would lead to "rationing," "less access," "fewer choices" and "long waits." But his campaign acknowledged that these were references to the existing Medicaid program, whose eligibility would be expanded under the Massachusetts senator's proposal.
The ads also charge, as Bush has on the campaign trail, that his challenger's plan is "a big government takeover." But there is no takeover -- the Kerry plan builds on the existing system of private health insurance, primarily through tax credits and incentives.
Fact sheets provided by the Bush campaign offered little evidence for these and other accusations beyond excerpts from such conservative forums as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard.
One ad says the Kerry plan "includes the IRS, Treasury Department, and several massive new government agencies." The other says that "Washington bureaucrats, not your doctor, make final decisions on your health."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a former heart surgeon made available by the Bush campaign, said federal officials would inevitably be involved with treatments costing more than $30,000 because the federal government would reimburse up to 75 percent of those high-cost cases. As a doctor, "I would not be dealing with the patient," he said. But in a speech in July, Frist proposed a catastrophic reinsurance program similar to Kerry's.
Frist said the Kerry plan "aggravates" what he views as rationing and other problems in Medicaid by adding an estimated 22 million beneficiaries to the 40 million already on the rolls. By this standard, the administration is presiding over health care rationing, as well.
Kerry senior adviser Tad Devine called the ads "utterly false and completely dishonest." Kerry health adviser Chris Jennings said most of the newly covered people would enroll not in Medicaid but in the state Children's Health Insurance Program, whose age limits would be expanded. In all cases, he said, enrollment would be voluntary, as would decisions by businesses and insurance firms to participate in the catastrophic program. No government agencies would be created, Jennings said.
The ads say Kerry's proposal would cost $1.5 trillion, based on a 10-year estimate by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Kerry puts the price tag at $653 billion but counts on about $300 billion in projected savings that may not materialize.
Kerry responded hours later with his own health care ad, saying that "for the last four years, one man has stood between America and lower-cost prescription drugs: George Bush." Kerry says in the ad that he will fight to legalize drug imports from Canada and to allow Medicare to make bulk purchases. Critics have raised safety questions about imported drugs and say large-scale Medicare buying could effectively amount to price controls.
Health care is not the only battlefield. In an ad released Sunday, the president cites Kerry's comments to the New York Times Magazine: "We have to get back to the place where terrorists are a nuisance like gambling and prostitution . . . we're never going to end them." The commercial says: "Terrorism . . . a nuisance? . . . How can Kerry protect us when he doesn't understand the threat?"
But Kerry did not call terrorism a nuisance. He said "it's something that you continue to fight" and that his goal is to reduce it to a nuisance level.
The ad also quotes Kerry as saying that "defeating terrorism was really more about law enforcement and intelligence than a strong military operation." While Kerry has used that formulation, he said in a January debate that the war "will continue" to be military in nature "for a long time. And we will need the best-trained and the most well-equipped and the most capable military."
Kerry has responded to other Bush attacks with a spot that says: "Here's the truth about taxes. After nearly four years under George Bush, the middle class is paying the bigger share of America's tax burden, and the wealthiest are paying less. It's wrong."
A Congressional Budget Office study found that while the richest Americans have seen their part of the tax burden drop since 2001, the share of tax payments by those earning $50,000 to $75,000 increased. But in saying that "we need to cut taxes on the middle class, not raise them," the Kerry ad ignores that Bush has cut taxes for middle-class families -- by 9.3 percent, for example, for those averaging $50,000 in income. Kerry's "cut" would simply extend the Bush reductions, although he would add new breaks for health care and college.
Staff writer Ceci Connolly contributed to this report.
----
The Role of Radio Sawa In Mideast Questioned
U.S.-Funded Station Lacks Influence, Report Indicates
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28031-2004Oct12.html
Radio Sawa, an Arab-language pop music and news station funded by the U.S. government and touted by the Bush administration as a success in reaching out to the Arab world, has failed to meet its mandate of promoting democracy and pro-American attitudes, according to a draft report prepared by the State Department's inspector general.
The report credited Radio Sawa with attracting a large audience in key Middle East countries but said the station, which has an annual budget of $22 million, has been so preoccupied with building an audience through its music that it has failed to adequately measure whether it is influencing minds.
The report also questioned the validity of some research given to Congress by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Radio Sawa's parent, to demonstrate its success.
Two independent panels of Arab-language experts hired by the inspector general's office gave the programming a mixed review, saying it did not match al-Jazeera in terms of quality and that parents would prefer that their teenagers not listen to Radio Sawa because its broadcasts contained such poor Arabic grammar. "Radio Sawa failed to present America to its audience," one panel concluded.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors has vehemently protested the report, questioning its methodology and assumptions in a 49-page pre-publication rebuttal. The report, based on extensive interviews in Washington and the Middle East with U.S. officials and public diplomacy experts, was scheduled to be published in August, but publication has been repeatedly delayed.
The draft report notes that Broadcasting Board officials often interfered with interviews and may have intimidated some employees and "made them less forthcoming." A copy of the draft report was supplied by a source who said he feared that the inspector general's office was buckling under pressure and would water down the conclusions.
Cameron R. Hume, who became acting inspector general after the draft was completed, confirmed the report was being revised. He acknowledged that the Broadcasting Board has complained, but he noted he had his own concerns, saying the report was based on "an erroneous view" of the legislation involving Radio Sawa. He declined to comment further.
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, said there had been a "big dust-up" over the report. He said Radio Sawa is "one of the biggest successes the U.S. has ever had in international broadcasting" but that "critics of Sawa made an inordinate contribution" to what he called a "fatally flawed report."
Sawa replaced the Arab-language version of the Voice of America, and Tomlinson said, "VOA unions are obsessed over knocking Sawa."
Norman J. Pattiz, a board member regarded as the driving force behind Radio Sawa, said that "there are many inaccuracies, misunderstandings and misinformation in the draft that need to be corrected." He said the report failed to comply with generally accepted government auditing standards, misrepresents Sawa's mission and performance, and misinterprets federal and congressional requirements.
The draft report said news and information programs represent only 25 percent of Radio Sawa's broadcast, and there appears to be a reluctance among officials to use it as a tool for public diplomacy. The report said Radio Sawa has not fully met the requirements of the VOA charter to present the policies of the United States "clearly and effectively" and to present "responsible discussions and opinion on these policies."
In a statement, the Broadcasting Board said that Radio Sawa is not preoccupied with music, as the report charges, but offers more than 300 newscasts per week, and that more than 90 percent of the staff is devoted to current affairs and informational programming. "The reason Radio Sawa plays music is because research indicated a combination of music and news is the best way to reach its target audience," the statement said.
The draft report said that while Radio Sawa has been promoted as a "heavily researched broadcasting network," the research concentrated primarily on gaining audience share, not on measuring whether Radio Sawa was influencing its audience. Despite the larger audiences, "it is difficult to ascertain Radio Sawa's impact in countering anti-American views and the biased state-run media of the Arab world," the draft report said.
It said Radio Sawa has been reluctant to conduct post-broadcast analyses to determine whether U.S. interests were advanced in its programming.
Moreover, it found there was a lack of uniform quality control at Radio Sawa. Some current and former staffers complained that correspondents' reports were uneven, with some reporters quoting "word for word" biased articles that appeared in local newspapers and Middle East news services.
--------
Bush Policy Gets a Ride on the House
Taxpayers Pay for Election-Year Mailing
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28038-2004Oct12.html
House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.) has launched an aggressive mail campaign -- at taxpayer expense -- to promote the environmental work of President Bush and a few vulnerable committee members in recent months.
This month Pombo mailed fliers to 100,000 residents in Minnesota, Wisconsin and a few western states touting the president's push for snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. Over the past year, he has sent similar fliers promoting the work of two western Republicans in competitive seats, along with a couple of mailings praising conservative California Democrats.
The flurry of federally funded mailings, along with Pombo's recent decision to give his committee staff a month's paid vacation right before the election, has angered several House Democrats, who question whether he is misusing taxpayer funds.
"It's a dumb political move that only shows taxpayers how Republicans in the House use official resources to campaign for George Bush," said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), whose constituent, Lois Reis, a retiree, alerted her to the mailing last week. "It's another example of ignoring ethics," McCollum said.
Reis said in an interview it was "veiled campaign literature for George Bush." A registered independent, Reis said of Pombo, "I never heard of him. I thought, he can't be from Minnesota."
Committee spokesman Brian Kennedy said the snowmobile flier, along with the other mailings, was part of a broader effort to reach Americans affected by federal land policies. In Pombo's bid to become chairman two years ago, "he said one of the things we need to do is communicate better with the folks who matter most, which are rural Americans on the ground," Kennedy said. "Democrats are seizing on an opportunity to paint a perception of something nefarious when there's nothing nefarious."
While individual lawmakers can use their office funds to send mail to their constituents up until 90 days of an election, committees can send fliers anywhere in the United States without an election-year cutoff. Unlike lawmakers' offices, panels do not have to submit their mailings for approval by the House Administration Committee to ensure they comply with official business.
That committee's GOP staff director approved the snowmobile flier in advance, according to the panel's spokesman, Brian Walsh, though Democrats did not see it.
The 338-word snowmobile flier mentions Bush five times, saying on its front, "The House Resources Committee is working with President Bush to ensure that snowmobilers have access to our National Parks and recreation areas. You can rest assured that the House Resources Committee and the Bush Administration are working together to protect your right to ride."
Pombo has requested more money for official postage than any other chairman, according to House records. He asked for $250,000 last year and this year, and received $50,000 each session. By contrast, before 2003 no committee spent more than $8,000 a year on postage.
In addition to the snowmobile flier, Pombo has sent mailings praising the work of GOP Reps. Rick Renzi (Ariz.) and Steve Pearce (N.M.), both of whom are in tight races, as well as to the constituents of Reps. Joe Baca and Dennis Cardoza, both Democrats from California who have sided with the chairman on key committee votes.
Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.) -- who advises other Democrats on using official resources -- tried in July to limit mass mailings from committees, which never occurred during election blackout periods before 2003. But his motion to limit committee postage to $25,000 a year failed 163 to 205, on a largely party-line vote.
"This is an unprecedented politicization of the budgets of the committees," said Sherman, who introduced legislation last week to prohibit committee mass mailings within 90 days of an election and more than 1,000 mailings from going to any one district.
Pombo has also irked Democrats by giving his staff an extra month of paid leave before the Nov. 2 election, a policy first reported in the Hill newspaper last week. Staff members usually get two to three weeks annual vacation.
Sherman said the paid leave, coupled with the recent mailings, represented a "combined unprecedented crescendo of politicization."
Kennedy said Pombo wanted to "reward a loyal hardworking staff," though he added, "I would guess that a few of our staffers might help in a 72-hour final [campaign] push, along with hundreds of others of staffers from both sides of the aisle."
While other lawmakers have allowed their staffs to take time off -- Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has about a dozen staffers working in House races across the country over the next month -- those aides are taking unpaid leave or regular vacation days.
-------- us politics
John Kerry and the Democrats' Project for a New American Century
lefthook.org
by Roy Rollin
10-13-04
http://www.lefthook.org/Politics/Rollin101304.html
Many of those on the liberal "left" who have jumped on board the "Anybody But Bush" bandwagon cite the current administration's non-stop saber-rattling and war-mongering as a justification for their doing so - as if such behavior was the private preserve of the Republican right. In particular, they point to the "neo-cons", who serve as Bush's brain trust, and whose "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC) for "maintaining global US pre-eminence and shaping the international security order in line with American principals and interests" has served as Bush's blue-print for further imperial expansion. But when it comes to defending and extending the empire, the Democrats are no slouches either. Nor have they ever been - something their own spokesmen don't hesitate to reiterate whenever they get the chance.
The already infamous Democratic Leadership Council, which master-minded the Democrats right ward lurch during the Clinton-Gore years, has its own think tank, the "Progressive Policy Institute" (PPI), which calls for virtually all of the same things the PNAC does, and in language that is almost identical to that used by their Republican "rivals." This is hardly shocking. Many of the PNAC "neo-cons" started their careers as Democrats, working for "Cold War" stalwart Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson in the 1970s before they jumped ship to join forces with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. That these fanatics and firebrands of the radical right could switch sides so seamlessly illustrates just how insignificant the "differences" are between both bosses' parties. Thus a 19-page manifesto for the "New Democrats" calls for "the bold exercise of American power" as the central point in "a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of muscular internationalism that would keep Americans safer than the Republican's go-it-alone policy."
"Muscular internationalism" is nothing more than a polite parlor term for what used to be known as "gunboat diplomacy," i.e., aggressive imperialism. Similarly, words like "human rights" are far more effective when it comes to hoodwinking easily influenced intellectuals, who are always looking to justify to themselves their either supporting an imperialist war or voting for the "lesser evil." Hence they cite "the Republican's go-it-alone policy" as a key "difference" between the two parties and work themselves into a frenzy over whether uni- or multi-lateralism is a better vehicle for imperialism to implement its agenda with. Indeed, those who think that cluster bombs and depleted uranium are somehow more "moral" when they are served up in UN blue rather than just in the red, white and blue of Uncle Sam usually think that the Democrats are preferable to the Republicans as well.
And that preference also extends to their wars. Thus, many of the "Anybody But Bush" crowd supported Democrat Bill Clinton's war against Yugoslavia in the name of "humanitarianism" while opposing Bush's war on Iraq. Some of them even wound up supporting the Butcher of Belgrade, General Wesley Clarke as a replacement for the Butcher of Baghdad, George Bush. For those on the receiving end of their destruction and devastation, however, it's just as ugly whether it's a Democrat or a Republican who carries it out.
When it comes to "boldly exercising American power," that is, waging wars abroad, the Democratic party has long been the preferred party of the ruling rich; from Wilson in WWI to FDR in WWII to Truman in Korea to JFK and LBJ in Vietnam to Clinton in Iraq and Yugoslavia. In addition to launching the "cold war" against the USSR after World War II, Democratic party politicians were behind most of the dirty deeds the CIA carried out to fight it during the sixties from the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to "counterinsurgency" in Indochina to death squads in Central and South America. Indeed, it was a Democrat who atom bombed two Japanese cities in order to set the Soviets straight on who was to be boss in the post-WWII world.
Some of the left-wing intellectuals who are once again holding their noses with one hand while they pull down the lever for the Democrats with the other (and urging the rest of us to do the same) may find such behavior abhorrent, but those that they hope to put in office as a "lesser evil" certainly don't. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are, after all, part of "tough-minded strategy...championed by Truman...in the cold war."
While many of those on the liberal "left" may feel a bit uneasy about rubbing shoulders with the unabashed and unapologetic cold warriors and counter-revolutionaries in the PPI in their efforts to unseat Bush, the later, for its part, is "proud of our party's tradition of tough-minded internationalism and strong record of defending America." And no-one, it seems, is "prouder" of that "tradition" than John Kerry, the "anybody" who the "Anybody But Bush" crowd now finds itself backing. In his book, "A Call to Service," Kerry proclaims that "the time has come to revive a bold vision of progressive internationalism" that echoes "the tough minded strategy of international engagement and leadership forged by" past Democratic party administrations.
While such acts of "international engagement" carried out under Democratic "leadership" as Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs may seem "progressive" to Kerry and the Fortune 500, in whose exclusive interest they were carried out, their victims know that they constituted plain old fashioned imperialism just as the war in Iraq does today.
Major General Smedley Butler, a Marine Corps officer who served under the "leadership" of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, was more on the money than Kerry when he described this "tough-minded strategy" as "the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street (and) mak(ing) Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914-5 (and) Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank ... to collect revenues in." Unlike Kerry, who hails this "tradition" as "progressive internationalism," Butler concluded that "war is just a racket ... conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses."
For his part, Kerry (along with almost every other prominent Democratic party politician) helped to "revive" that "tradition" by giving Bush a blank check to wage war where-ever and when-ever he pleased. This included voting for the war in Iraq, which Kerry, who "fell" hook, line and sinker for all the Bush administration's lie about "WMDs," still thinks "was the right thing to do." And while Kerry now says that Bush "fuck(ed) up badly" in Iraq, his "tough minded strategy of international engagement" means being even "tougher" than Bush and sending in "another 40,000 active service troops" and "spend(ing) whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq."
Many anti-war activists from the 1960s may remember John Kerry as a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and recall his eloquent testimony before Congress on their behalf. Therefore his current views on that war should be of some interest to those in today's anti-war movement who are urging a vote for him. According to Kerry, "it's time to get over it and recognize it as an exception, not as a ruling example of US military engagements of the 20th century." For his part Kerry "got over it" a long time ago, having "voted for the largest defense budgets in the history of our country" and having supported "US military engagements" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The only difference between these imperial adventures and Vietnam that makes the latter "exceptional" is that in Vietnam the US lost. Indeed, the real reason Kerry wants the rest of us "to get over" Vietnam is so that we can join him in supporting future wars, since he, no less than George Bush, "will not hesitate to order direct military action when needed against terrorist groups and their leaders." Only according to those running the Vietnam war (mainly "progressive internationalist" Democrats like JFK and LBJ) those Vietnamese who resisted American imperialism were "terrorist groups" as well. In 1971 Kerry, as an anti-war veteran, asked the Senate "how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake" in Vietnam. In 2004, as a Senator, he has no qualms about asking one of the "40,000 active service troops" that he would send to Iraq "to be the last man to die" there.
Insofar as "defending America" goes, the Vietnam war, like the Iraq war, was no different than all the others that Kerry and the PPI are so "proud" of, an attempt to make the world safe for big business. Nor were any of them "mistakes." Just as imperialism is the continuation of capitalism in the epoch of international economics, war is the continuation of imperialism by more forceful means. When the Soviet Union was still around, this could be justified in the name of opposing "communism." Only the "communism" that Washington had in mind was not the supposed "threat" posed by the military might of the USSR, but the threat to their corporate interests posed by the workers and peasants of the world taking the resources of their countries into their own hands and out of those of American corporations who controlled them. Now, under the guise of fighting against "terrorism," the imperialists intend to take them back. In "cold war" days, the government claimed it was defending "democracy"...while it supported dictators abroad and suppressed democratic rights at home with "red scares" and witch-hunts.
Bush, who was never elected in the first place, claims to be fighting for "freedom" in Iraq while stamping it out here. Kerry, who supported Bush in both of those endeavors, stands for more of the same, only in the name of "progressive internationalism." For the only "freedom" that "matters" to both bosses parties is the "right" of the same American corporations, who already can invest and exploit and pillage and plunder where ever and when ever they please in the US, to do the same thing in the rest of the world.
The Democrats, with John Kerry in the front lines, have made it a point of honor to continue to pledge allegiance to Bush's so-called "war on terrorism." They "differ" only insofar as the targets are concerned. As if to make it clear to those who, like Noam Chomsky, still profess to see "small differences (that) can translate into large outcomes." between Kerry and Bush, Kerry proclaims that "the war on terror... is a clash of civilization against chaos; of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future." While some Democrats may argue that the war on Iraq was a "diversion" from the "war on terrorism," it was, in fact, part and parcel of it and had little to do with "progress" and a lot to do with oil and empire. For the only thing that the "war on terrorism" has to do with terrorism is that it is being run by terrorists in Washington and on Wall Street. They are intent on terrorizing the rest of the world into submitting to their dictates, just as they have already done to working people in the US. Seizing Iraq's oil and dominating the Middle East was as key a component of their game plan as is driving down American workers living standards.
For Kerry and the PPI, "President Kennedy epitomized America's commitment to the 'survival and success of liberty.'" Of course the "liberty" Kennedy was committed to included staunch support to dictators and death squads throughout the "Third World" and is historically "epitomized" by the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam. Kerry, sees himself following in the footsteps of his fellow Boston brahmin, who in the 1960 election, actually attacked Richard Nixon from the right, accusing him of not being tough enough on the commies and allowing, as vice president, a "missile gap" to unfavorably emerge between the US and the USSR. Needless to say JFK's missile gap was as real as Bush's "WMDs" were. Once in office, Kennedy proceeded to escalate the cold war against Castro's Cuba and the Vietnamese revolution.
Kerry, who accuses Bush of being too soft on "terrorism" would like to do the same thing in Iraq that JFK did in Vietnam by bringing in 40,000 more troops. So while Kerry's comparisons with JFK are certainly on target, should he get into office and have his way he may find himself being compared to Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson. LBJ was undone by the debacle in Vietnam, but only after being passed off by the liberal left as the "peace" candidate vs the right-wing Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. Like LBJ, Kerry is now being being pushed by today's liberal "left" as the "lesser evil."
While the "Anybody But Bush" crowd appears to have forgotten most of what they may have learned from the left in the 1960s, some of them must at least remember Karl Marx's famous quote about historical events appearing first as "tragedy," and then later as "farce." Roy Rollin attends the College of Staten Island (CUNY)
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Unions, Environmentalists Like Clean Energy's Economic Potential
October 13, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-13-09.asp#anchor7
A clean energy policy would create 1.4 million new American jobs by 2025 and save consumers some $170 billion in energy costs annually, according to a study released Tuesday by labor groups and environmental organizations.
The study, authored by the California research firm Redefining Progress, centers on a suite of clean energy policies that will increase energy efficiency, renewable energy, and improve fuel economy.
The authors say their policies, in addition to creating jobs and lowering energy costs, will help reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil by 1.7 billion barrels a year, boost annual gross domestic product by $123 billion by 2025, and cut half the current amount of greenhouse gases emitted annually.
"Producing 20 percent of our electricity with renewable energy by 2020 will create good jobs and save consumers money while reducing our growing dependence on energy imports from politically unstable regions around the world," said Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
"It is time to switch from the polluting energy resources of the past to the advanced clean energy technologies of the future," Meyer said. "The technologies we need are available today. All it takes is the political will."
The report was released by UCS, the Sierra Club, the United Steel Workers, the Service Employees International Union, UNITE/HERE, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The organizations say the path outlined in the report stand in stark contrast to the policies of the Bush administration, which they contend do little to increase energy efficiency or renewable energy.
"It is time to explode the myth that you can't create high-paying jobs, and protect the environment at the same time - that's a false choice" says Dave Foster, District 11 Director of the United Steelworkers. "You can design policies that are good for the environment while creating competitive new jobs - and this new report illustrates how to do that now."
The study can be found at: http://www.redefiningprogress.org/bluegreen/SmarterCleanerStronger.pdf
----
Hydrogen Economy Far From Reality
October 13, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-13-09.asp#anchor8
The promise of the hydrogen economy is far from reality and in danger of being hijacked by energy interests keen to keep consumers reliant on fossil fuels, environmentalists say.
A new report by the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) and their environmental affiliates finds that the transition to a hydrogen economy is not a panacea to solve the nation's energy woes.
"The public needs to look under the hood and kick the tires before buying most of the hydrogen schemes being sold today," said Rob Sargent, senior energy policy analyst with the National Association of State PIRGs and affiliated environmental organizations.
"If the fossil, nuclear and automobile industries succeed in getting hydrogen policies and investments to supplant energy efficiency and renewable energy, it will undermine the real potential of hydrogen to dramatically improve our economy and our quality of life."
Hydrogen has long been touted as the next great energy revolution. It can be easily produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen - when used for power the only byproducts are water and heat.
The report specifically focuses on the potential use of hydrogen in cars and trucks, which has been touted as a "zero emission" replacement for the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.
It concludes that the economic, environmental and energy security impacts of a hydrogen-powered transportation system depend greatly on the sources of energy used to create the hydrogen.
The key to the environmental friendliness of the hydrogen economy is how the fuel is produced - and this is where critics say the Bush administration, which frequently touts its hydrogen initiative, has got it all wrong.
They believe the administration is keen to use fossil fuels and nuclear power to produce hydrogen, a policy that environmentalists say will lock the United States into a "black hydrogen" future.
"Hydrogen is only beneficial to the environment and public health if it is renewable," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, energy advocate with Environment California Research & Policy Center. "Therefore, any state of federal program that seeks to commercialize hydrogen-powered vehicles must resist subsidies to environmentally damaging sources of hydrogen, such as coal and nuclear power, while emphasizing an aggressive pursuit of renewable energy and energy efficiency."
The report notes that a slew of technological barriers continue to stand in the way of a successful rollout of hydrogen vehicles and fueling infrastructure.
It echoes the findings of a study released earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences that noted even under the best case scenario the hydrogen transition will do little to cut oil imports or greenhouse gas emissions during the next 25 years
The National Academy panel said there is little existing capacity for hydrogen production, which remains expensive, and fuel cell technologies face challenges of storage, cost, reliability and safety.
It called on the U.S. government to simultaneously pursue a hydrogen initiative along with strategies to enhance energy efficiency and develop alternative energy sources.
The study can be found here: http://newenergyfuture.com/reports/Hydrogen10_04.pdf
-------- OTHER
-------- census
Census Says Impasse Over Funds Threatens Survey
By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28101-2004Oct12.html
The Census Bureau will have to abandon years of work it has conducted on a household survey that is intended to replace the long form in the 2010 census unless Congress acts soon to provide adequate funding for the project, the agency's director said yesterday.
The American Community Survey is designed to offer neighborhood-level numbers every year, in contrast to the once-a-decade portrait from the census.
The Bush administration's budget requested $165 million for the survey this fiscal year. The House appropriations bill that funds the Commerce, Justice and State departments provided $146 million. A bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee gave it $65 million.
Agreement on a compromise is not likely at least until after next month's elections, and census officials are concerned that House-Senate negotiators might take the typical route of splitting the difference between their amounts.
"If the Senate mark were to survive, it would be impossible to go forward with the American Community Survey, and we'd have to do something different," Census Bureau Director C. Louis Kincannon said yesterday. "It has to be pretty close to the House figure. . . . This is not a traditional appropriations situation where you can split the difference."
The bureau mails the survey to about 65,000 homes each month, and officials say they need data from 250,000 homes a month for five years to offer a reliable, neighborhood-level substitute for the long form. The full rollout, repeatedly postponed for lack of money, must begin by early next year, Kincannon said. The Census Bureau has spent $334 million on the project since the mid-1990s.
Kincannon said census officials need to know soon the survey's fate because its elimination would require them to plan quickly for a long form in the 2010 census. If that happens, the bureau would stop collecting survey data next year and reassign about 1,000 jobs at its Suitland headquarters and across the country.
The survey would not replace the short form that supplies basic population and racial counts used to reapportion congressional seats and redistrict political boundaries. The long form, which was sent to one in six households in 2000, includes questions about education, income, commuting, immigration and other topics that guide government programs and marketing decisions.
Some critics contend that those questions, which the survey also asks, are an invasion of privacy, but Kincannon said he does not think that played a role in the Senate appropriations figure. "Money is scarce and that makes it difficult for the Congress to agree to new expenditures," he said.
Census officials met with congressional staff last week to warn of the survey's possible demise.
Barbara Everitt Bryant, who headed the Census Bureau during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, said she wrote congressional appropriators this week urging more money for the survey, which she said would be "an enormous improvement" over the census long form.
"I am very worried about it because we think the time has come for the ACS," said Joe Salvo, New York City's chief demographer. City planners, he said, yearn for more current numbers than the census offers once a decade.
------- ACTIVISTS
Whistleblowers Ignored, Investigations on the Wane
October 13, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-13-09.asp#anchor5
More federal employees are reporting waste, fraud and abuse under the administration of President George W. Bush than under previous administrations, but fewer of these reports are being investigated, according to a government watchdog group.
The study by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) centers on statistics gathered by the Office of Special Counsel, which is charged with reviewing reports by federal employees of official misconduct and then overseeing investigation of credible charges.
PEER reports that the number of whistleblower reports has nearly doubled since the 2001 fiscal year, increasing from 380 cases to a reported 535 cases in fiscal year 2003.
Only 11 of the total 1,091 cases were referred to agency heads for investigation.
The backlog of pending whistleblower reports has more than doubled, to 690 from the backlog of 287 cases in FY 2001.
By law, the Office of Special Counsel is supposed to make a determination as to whether a report merits investigation within 15 days.
PEER's analysis finds this deadline is almost never met, with many matters left hanging for months or years.
"Time and again, whistleblowers have proven critical to protecting the public but their courage is wasted if their warnings just gather dust in a file drawer," said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "The only thing special about the Office of Special Counsel is its lack of speed."
Out of a total of more than 2,300 pending complaints, the Office of Special Counsel has not represented a single whistleblower in an enforcement action to remedy retaliation.
More than 83 percent of surveyed federal workers with personnel complaints said they were dissatisfied with results obtained by the Office of Special Counsel while less than seven percent expressed satisfaction.
After a decline, backlogs of pending personnel complaints are beginning to rise, even though the Office of Special Counsel is investigating fewer cases than ever before - only six percent were accepted for investigation in FY 2003.
"This year, Congress failed to pass even modest reforms to the Whistleblower Protection Act due in large part to the opposition of the Bush administration," Ruch said. "As it stands now, the protections for federal whistleblowers are a beacon of false hope for thousands."
--------
MARY KELLY TOOK AN AXE AND STRUCK A BLOW FOR JUSTICE
13/10/2004
Fairview.AntiWarIreland.Org
http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=18478
On July 3 2003 that's what US citizen and ex-Marine Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, said when he spoke in Galway, Ireland, in support of Mary Kelly, whose trial had concluded earlier that day. The major charge against her: 'criminal damage without lawful excuse' to a US warplane at Shannon Airport, Ireland. Ritter had come to Ireland to testify as a witness, but his testimony was hindered by the trial judge. The jury split on the verdict, so Mary received a reprieve - until the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland decided to re-try her on the same charge.
Justice?
Mary's second trial in June 2004 collapsed when she was literally abandoned in the courtroom by those who had been engaged to protect her best interests. Rather than ask the judge to force disclosure of the legal advice given by the Attorney General to the Irish government relating to the illegal use of Shannon Airport for this war, her legal counsel suddenly resigned.
Justice?
On October 20, 2004 Mary's third trial will begin. She has been denied legal aid for expert witnesses and faces massive costs. Her case file has been withheld by previous counsel, obstructing her from briefing new counsel. Now she is forced to represent herself.
Justice?
Mary's courageous action to save human life highlighted the complicity of the Irish government in this war - they continue by facilitating fuelling stopovers at Shannon Airport for US warplanes en route to the Gulf. The Irish Constitution clearly states: 'War shall not be declared and the State shall not participate in any war save with the assent of Dáil Éireann.' (Article 28.3.1)
Dáil Éireann (the Irish parliament) has been misled that this assistance to the aggressor plays no part in this dirty war.
But we, the People, are not so easily fooled - We will not stand by and allow the Irish government to use Mary Kelly as a scapegoat to cover for its own crimes. Citizens of the World - We call on you to help us defend Mary Kelly from injustice !
Scott Ritter on Mary Kelly
"Mary Kelly's struggle isn't about a single individual. It's about a nation: the nation of Ireland. It's about a community: the European community. It's about a larger community: the international community. It's about International Law. You need a rallying cry? Mary Kelly is a rallying cry! She has done something courageous. She has done something in defense of a higher principle. She needs your help."
Shannon Warport?
Shannon Airport in Ireland continues to be used intensively by the US military for the refuelling of planes, carrying troops and terror weapons en route to commit war crimes in Iraq. (Weapons include napalm, cruise missiles and depleted uranium.) The same US warplanes refuel at Shannon on their return journeys carrying the spoils of war: flag-draped coffins of their dead for rapid burial in USA, kidnapped torture candidates to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, irradiated and amputee veterans for disposal somewhere out of mind. The 'neutral' Irish government is fully aware of this situation.
Criminal government
"What we are fighting here is our own criminal government which has involved Ireland in an illegal war. They have facilitated more than half the US troops going to fight. They have torn our Constitution to shreds. They do not even allow the Gardai (police) and Customs at Shannon to board these planes and inspect the cargo. There is a huge arsenal of weapons flying through and over Shannon, with no concern for the safety of the citizens. Ireland has been made complicit in an illegal war, against the will of the Irish people."
"I believe it is my duty as a responsible citizen to rid a civilian airport of belligerent US military warplanes. Their presence in our country is contrary to our Constitution . . . which is the highest law of our land. I am not willing to be an accomplice by facilitating these war-machines with fuel."
... Mary Kelly, in public statements
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International Bank Account Number(IBAN)
IE 45ULSB 9860 2050 4000 07
- WRITE TO THE JUDGE, demand Mary's right to a fair trial, a full defence and that the jury be allowed to decide on the facts.
Letters....> P.O. Box 9260, Dublin 1, Ireland
Email....> keltoi@graffiti.net
- SPREAD THIS INFORMATION, Download + use the PDF flyer linked on this page. Start your own crusade - Take Action against this insane bloody war!
- PICKET IRISH EMBASSIES, demand that the real war-criminals be put on trial!
for further info, comments etc. see Mary's website
This appeal is issued by Fairview.AntiWarIreland.Org -- Press enquiries, Tlf: +353-(0)86.351.24.69
http://www.freewebs.com/Mary_Kelly PDF info flyer for Mary Kelly's trial
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