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NUCLEAR
Marshalls atoll files for nuclear damages, but payout pot near empty
Israeli whistleblower Vanunu makes appeal to European Social Forum
Anti-nuclear protesters block Austrian-Czech border
U.S., EU at odds over Tehran's nuclear program
Europeans to Press Iran on Nuclear Plans
France calls for complete halt to Iran uranium enrichment
Iran Rejects Any Deal to End Uranium Enrichment
U.S. agrees to Iran deal proposed by its allies
Sabotage at Three Mile Island?
NRC extends Yankee review
MILITARY
Taliban leaders were the big losers in vote
Canadian Sees a Long Haul in Afghanistan
Two American G.I.'s Die in Afghanistan Blast
US trying to speed up creation of 70,000 strong Afghan army
U.N. Says Sudan Death Toll Reaches 70,000
Turkey negotiating purchase of 350 German tanks
Students' freedoms eyed in China
Aristide backers clash with police
Car bomb kills 10 as Ramadan starts
Fallujah Strikes Herald Possible Attack
Two American Soldiers Killed in Helicopter Crashes in Baghdad
U.S. Intensifying Bombing Attacks on Falluja Sites
Israeli Military Forces End Gaza Attack After 17 Days
Desolation and Vengeance Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Security Council elections buttress interests of U.S.
Army probes unit's refusal of mission
Inquiry Opens After Reservists Balk in Baghdad
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bahamas Firm Screens Personal Data To Assess Risk
Watchdog Faults U.S. Port Defenses Topic Homeland Security
POLITICS
Watchdog cries foul on ballpark
Rove Testifies in Probe of Leak of CIA Worker's Name
Corries push U.S. government to investigate their daughter's death
Military survey 3 to 1 for Bush
Saddam's 'mass destruction' put on film by Moore critic
For the Candidates, Vietnam Choices Linger
Kerry Says President May Bring Back Draft
Kerry brings up draft to put down Bush
Scowcroft Is Critical of Bush
Bush Lawyer Anticipates Delay in Tally
ACTIVISTS
Police Fire Projectiles At Protesters
-------- NUCLEAR
Marshalls atoll files for nuclear damages, but payout pot near empty
(AFP)
Oct 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041016015800.10or6px9.html
MAJURO - The remote Marshall Islands atoll of Likiep, which was dusted with fallout from nuclear tests in the 1950s, has filed a late suit for compensation, officials said, but chances of a big payout appear remote.
The Likiep suit claims the prosperous economic, employment and educational status enjoyed by the mid-Pacific island's residents "fell precipitously" following the US testing between 1946 and 1958.
It was filed this week after the Nuclear Claims Tribunal -- established in 1986 with 80 million dollars from the US government -- set a November 30 deadline for additional class action suits.
The tribunal has already granted awards to both Bikini and Enewetak and is currently reviewing three other claims, however its funding is limited as only five million dollars are left.
Bikini and Enewetak, which were more heavily affected than Likiep, were both awarded 500 million dollars but received only a fraction of the amount.
"The inability of the tribunal to pay off existing awards and the continuing flow of new claims and awards continues to evidence the manifest inadequacy of the existing funding to fully compensate the people of the Marshall Islands for injuries suffered as a result of the nuclear testing program," tribunal chairman James Plasman said in a statement this week.
The Likiep suit, which does not seek a specific amount, cites a 1948 US Navy report describing the economic status of the atoll, part of a string of 1,200 islands just north of the equator, as "outstanding".
But following the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test, and dozens of other large bombs that deposited hazardous radioactive fallout in the area, the "level of wealth and economic activity on Likiep materially diminished," the suit said.
"As people became sick and incapacitated, or died, or moved away to seek medical help, the economic life of Likiep fell precipitously. The population dropped from 630 people in 1956 to 430 in 1967."
The suit decried the fact that US officials never evacuated Likiep residents for Bravo, the largest US nuclear test, which exploded across Bikini atoll with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.
"It was more convenient for the US to avoid the costs and burdens of evacuation and to conceal the fact and extent of the radiological contamination covering the northern Marshall Islands," it said.
"The US did not provide warnings, information or instructions to Likiep people as to the dangers of fallout and ways to reduce exposure to radiation" and they consequently continued to eat and drink local food and water "significantly increasing their total radiation exposure".
The suit refers to birth defects, miscarriages and stillbirths following the 67 tests carried out in the Marshalls, saying the US Navy gave no explanation for taking blood samples from children on the atoll a few days after Bravo, and later shooting dogs on the island and taking away the carcasses.
"No reasonable person, had he or she been fully knowledgeable about the levels of radioactive fallout to which Likiep Atoll had been exposed, would have chosen to live or conduct ordinary gainful economic activity on Likiep during or for years after the end of the nuclear testing program," the claim said.
The tribunal is expected to wait until its November 30 deadline to see how many other islands file suits before setting hearing dates.
-----
Israeli whistleblower Vanunu makes appeal to European Social Forum
LONDON (AFP)
Oct 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041016182954.zdum74r0.html
Mordechai Vanunu, released in April after 18 years in an Israeli jail for revealing his country's nuclear programme, sent a peace message to a gathering here of left-wing and counter-culture groups, calling for a reduction of all military budgets.
Speaking by telephone from Israel in a call relayed by loudspeakers to the assembly, Vanunu appealed for the promotion of worlddwide peace and the reduction of inequality between peoples.
"This is a message for the 21st century," he told the European Social Forum, which has attracted 19,000 activists to the British capital this weekend.
Vanunu was sentenced in 1986 to 18 years in prison on charges of treason and espionage after leaking top-secret details about the Dimona nuclear plant to the London newspaper The Sunday Times.
On his release, he was subjected to a series of sweeping restrictions, including a ban on travelling abroad as well as holding unauthorized meetings with foreigners.
"Military budgets must be reduced everywhere," he told a debate on disarmament.
Trade unionists, environmentalists, human rights activists and other delegates from around the world have gathered in London for the three-day European Social Forum.
The hundreds of seminars, debates and workshops during the forum will see virtually every left-leaning, anti-corporate and pro-green subject covered, although concern at the situation in Iraq has threatened to dominate proceedings.
-------- accidents and safety
Anti-nuclear protesters block Austrian-Czech border
PRAGUE (AFP)
Oct 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041016173449.muqpslu2.html
Around 100 protesters blocked an Austrian-Czech border crossing with tractors for several hours Saturday to protest a decision by Czech nuclear authorities to run the trouble-plagued Temelin plant on full power.
The Czech State Authority for Nuclear Safety's (SUJB) decided Monday to allow Temelin, 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the Austrian border, to switch to regular output.
The environment minister of the Austrian province of Upper Austria, Rudi Anschober, described the decision as "unacceptable" given "the high number of defects" at the plant.
His concerns were echoed by Mathilde Halla of the Upper Austria Platform Against Atomic Danger who called on Austrian and Czech politicians to meet to discuss the problem.
She also attacked Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell.
"It is irresponsible of Proell to not see the SUJB decision as a violation of the Melk agreement," she said.
Under the 2001 Melk agreement the Czech Republic pledged to raise the safety of Temelin and to exchange information with experts, and Austria promised not to block the Czech Republic's EU entry over the issue.
The border crossing between Dolni Dvoriste and Wulowitz was blocked to all traffic Saturday and police rerouted cars well ahead of the blockade by around 20 tractors.
Czech environmental groups have distanced themselves from the blockade, as has the Austrian environment ministry.
The Temelin nuclear plant, opened in 2000, has been sharply criticised by activists in Austria, southern Germany as well as the Czech Republic itself who say it is not safe because it combines Soviet design with Western fuel and safety technology.
The doubts have been repeatedly dismissed by Prague.
In June, the European Union dispatched a team of experts to Temelin after a leak of radioactive water.
-------- iran
U.S., EU at odds over Tehran's nuclear program
October 16, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041015-114341-6763r.htm
The Bush administration yesterday refused to back away from its demand that Iran be referred to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program next month, even as European allies said they will offer Tehran a deal next week.
The European Union will present Iran with one last chance to suspend its effort to enrich uranium, which can be used to make atomic bombs, in exchange for economic and trade benefits, diplomats said after an eight-nation meeting at the State Department.
"The EU-three indicated they will be presenting their idea to Iran next week," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in reference to Britain, Germany and France, which have taken the lead on the Iran nuclear issue.
The benefits package would include access to imported nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, as well as lifting of some EU economic penalties and opening of trade opportunities with the Islamic republic.
"The United States listened carefully to the EU-three explanations of their approach, and the EU-three agreed to inform us of the results of their efforts," Mr. Casey said.
But he said the Bush administration continued to insist that, at its next meeting on Nov. 25, the board of governors of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should send the case to the Security Council.
"The United States has long made clear its views that Iran's confirmed non-compliance with safeguard obligations must be reported by the IAEA board to the U.N. Security Council," Mr. Casey said.
At its last meeting in September, the board gave Iran until Nov. 25 to suspend the uranium-enrichment program.
European officials said at yesterday's meeting that they still hope to convince Tehran to comply before the deadline.
"The U.S. position is a bit different from ours," a senior European diplomat said after the State Department session with officials from the Group of Eight (G-8) - the United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.
"No government changed its position today," he added.
The three-hour meeting ended without a statement or decision. "We did not decide on a new course of action," a U.S. official said.
The administration did not endorse the EU's benefits package. Even though U.S. officials said they told the Europeans to "go ahead" with it, they did not hide their belief that Tehran will not comply.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said earlier this week that the European Union 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."
But diplomats at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, were quoted by Reuters news agency yesterday as saying that Iran may be willing to comply if, along with a long list of benefits, it receives an assurance that it will not be attacked.
Diplomats said such a guarantee was not discussed at the G-8 meeting, where the United States was represented by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
--------
Europeans to Press Iran on Nuclear Plans
U.S. Backs Initiative Endorsed by G-8 but Is Skeptical Tehran Will Honor Terms
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A18
The United States yesterday effectively and reluctantly agreed to allow three European nations to launch a final diplomatic initiative aimed at persuading Iran to accept a plan that would block it from developing a nuclear weapon, U.S. and European officials said.
Increasingly alarmed by Iran's potential to develop nuclear weapons, Germany, France and Britain -- endorsed by the Group of Eight, the world's wealthiest alliance -- will meet next week with Iranian officials to make it clear that Tehran faces a choice: Embrace the process outlined in this diplomatic effort or face the possibility of new pressures or punitive action from the United Nations, the officials said. The terms were outlined during talks at the State Department yesterday between the United States and its G-8 allies.
The outline of a two-stage compromise is emerging from the Europeans' overture to Tehran, said several European officials familiar with the plan. During the first stage, effective immediately, Iran would indefinitely suspend all efforts at developing an independent fuel cycle for its nuclear energy program but not give up its right to enrich uranium, the officials said. Enriched uranium can be diverted to military uses.
That first stage would have to be completed and verified by a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency before the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency's next board meeting, in late November.
The second stage would involve broader talks on long-term security and economic issues, to help "normalize" Iran's place in the world and to reassure the international community about various Iranian policies, said a senior European envoy familiar with the plan.
The Europeans, for example, would be willing to explore new trade agreements, technology cooperation and other assistance while working out a permanent agreement on Iran's nuclear program and discussing other contentious issues, such as terrorism and the Middle East peace process.
At some stage of the negotiations, the Europeans expect the United States to participate in the diplomatic effort, ending 25 years of tensions, the European envoy said. The overall goal is to signal to Iran that it should not need to develop its own fuel cycle.
Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, a 1,000-megawatt facility Russia just completed, is due to start up in 2005 or 2006. The Europeans want an agreement whereby Moscow provides the fuel to Iran, and Iran returns the spent fuel to Russia, the envoys said.
The sweeping potential for cooperation is a "dream offer" that could make Iran "the big winner in the region," said the senior European envoy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy.
The State Department called yesterday's talks "useful." But the U.S. delegation, led by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, expressed deep skepticism that Iran will comply, given its failure to follow through on an agreement with Germany, France and Britain a year ago.
"We emphasized to our G-8 partners that Iran should not be allowed to defy any longer the requirements and requests called for in the past five IAEA resolutions," said State Department press officer Edgar Vasquez.
A senior State Department official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitive diplomacy, added that there has been no sign that the Iranians will take this initiative any more seriously. "So, unfortunately, our feeling is that the Iranians are still Iranians," he said.
The G-8 -- which also includes Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia -- was brought in to widen the leverage. "We're not alone anymore," said one envoy from the original three countries party to the talks.
The specifics of the four-page European plan are scheduled to be put forward next week, possibly Thursday in Vienna, European and Iranian envoys said. Other G-8 members will pursue parallel bilateral discussions directly with Tehran, European envoys said.
In an interview, a senior Iranian official said Tehran is ready to take "very positive measures for confidence building," including "voluntary, temporary" steps to ensure that the country will not divert nuclear technology for use in weapons.
For Iran, the most important element in any agreement is recognition of Tehran's right to nuclear technology for energy, he said. "There is a good possibility for a solution. Providing this condition which emanates from our insistence on mutual respect is met, then Iran will be forthcoming," he added on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing diplomacy.
But he also warned that the Islamic republic does not want to be confronted or faced with "pressure tactics." "The Europeans know our red lines, and the room for maneuver is well understood," he said. "But if they want to set specific demands and use pressure tactics, then it will be dead on arrival."
The initiative emerged not only because the Europeans want to try at least one more time, but also because of the potential difficulties of winning agreement at the IAEA meeting next month and then at the U.N. Security Council if Iran does not comply, European envoys said. Non-aligned countries such as South Africa, Brazil and Malaysia fear that any move against Iran would set a precedent limiting their potential to develop nuclear energy programs, the diplomats said.
"It's one thing to say we'll go to the Security Council," said a European informed about the new diplomacy, "and another thing to get there."
--------
France calls for complete halt to Iran uranium enrichment
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041016134820.ojbwzofn.html
France and its G8 partners should call for a complete suspension by Iran of its advanced uranium enrichment programme, the French foreign ministry said on Saturday.
"Time is of the essence. France will continue to work with its partners and the Iranian authorities... towards the complete suspension by Iran of its enrichment and reprocessing activities," the ministry said in a press statement.
A November 25 deadline for Iran to comply with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands to suspend uranium enrichment work is looming, with the possibility that Iran may be referred to the UN Security Council and face sanctions if it misses the deadline.
Britain, France and Germany told the United States on Friday at a G8 meeting in Washington that they would offer Iran incentives to try to persuade it to halt uranium enrichment activities which they fear are linked to a plan to build nuclear weapons.
The Europeans are hoping the inducements will satisfy the US, which backs a tougher line against Iran.
However Iran has since said it will reject any European proposal for a complete cessation of its work on the nuclear fuel cycle. It has said, however, that it would be willing to consider further "confidence-building" measures and extending a suspension of uranium enrichment.
"As well as leading this joint effort, we recognise the right of any state to use nuclear energy in accordance with the (nuclear) Non Proliferation Treaty," the French statement said.
It added that the Washington G8 meeting had "shown the intensity of the efforts made to try to reach a solution by diplomatic means."
"These efforts will continue in the weeks ahead with the aim of reaching an agreement between now and the meeting" of the IAEA on November 25, the statement said.
Under the terms of an accord signed late last year with Germany, France and Britain, Iran pledged to suspend uranium enrichment activities and accepted unannounced inspections of its nuclear facilities.
However, it has since resumed work on centrifuges key to the enrichment process and back-tracked on its commitment to allow snap inspections, claiming the Europeans have not held up their end of the deal.
-----
Iran Rejects Any Deal to End Uranium Enrichment
Reuters
By Amir Paivar
Oct 16, 2004 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=4&u=/nm/20041016/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it would reject any proposal to halt uranium enrichment, a step European Union (news - web sites) diplomats are proposing to end a row over whether Iran is seeking atomic weapons.
EU diplomats have said they are seeking U.S. and Russian support for a deal that would ask Iran to give up uranium enrichment in return for technical and economic assistance.
"Any proposal which deprives Iran of its legitimate right to a fuel cycle is not acceptable," Hossein Mousavian, Iran's head of foreign policy on the Supreme National Security Council, told state television.
However, he said he was not responding to a specific offer.
"We have not yet received the text of the proposal and have to see what it contains to assess it," he said.
Uranium enriched to a low level can be used to fuel nuclear power stations such as one Iran is building at the southern port of Bushehr.
If enriched further it can be used in nuclear warheads. But oil-rich Iran denies accusations from Washington that it has military nuclear ambitions and argues its atomic program is dedicated solely to meeting booming demand for electricity.
EU WILL CONTINUE TO PUSH
The French Foreign Ministry in Paris, asked about Mousavian's remarks, said France would still push for Iran to give up its enrichment program.
"Time is short. France and its partners will continue to work with the Iranian authorities ... with, as their goal, securing the complete suspension by Iran of its enrichment and reprocessing activities," a spokesman said.
Iran mines uranium ore in its central desert near the city of Yazd, and Iranian politicians have been united in saying that the fuel cycle, from cutting uranium ore out of the ground to producing fuel, should be entirely in Iranian hands.
"Iran will supply fuel to its power stations from its own resources," Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the armed forces, told Sharq newspaper.
"Western countries want to get our oil then sell us nuclear fuel at tens or hundreds of times more than its price," he added.
U.S. presidential hopeful John Kerry (news - web sites) and his allies have proposed "calling Iran's bluff" by offering to supply atomic fuel so that Iran could give up its enrichment program.
Foreign Ministers from Britain, France and Germany won Iran's guarantee to suspend uranium enrichment when they visited Tehran last year.
But the promise lapsed and Iran has since restarted making parts for centrifuges that enrich uranium by spinning it at supersonic speed, and has started producing uranium hexafluoride, the centrifuges' feed gas.
Israel has increased pressure on Iran's enrichment activities by buying in weaponry that could target centrifuge bunkers, deep underground near the central town of Natanz. (-Additional reporting by Jon Boyle In Paris)
------
U.S. agrees to Iran deal proposed by its allies
The New York Times
By Steven R. Weisman
October 16, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/15/news/iran.html
WASHINGTON The United States reached an informal agreement Friday to let Britain, France and Germany offer a deal to Iran next week in which Tehran would immediately suspend its nuclear fuel enrichment program in return for a discussion on future economic benefits and other incentives, European diplomats said.
The diplomats said that the agreement came at an unusual meeting of top American, European, Russian and Japanese envoys that marked the first time that so many countries' representatives had come together for the express purpose of discussing how to deal with what many experts say is Iran's accelerating nuclear arms program.
The Bush administration has been careful to say that it is not formally endorsing a new attempt by its European allies to provide incentives to Iran, and indeed officials have also said they are skeptical that any such offer will work.
Instead, the United States favors taking up Iran's program at the United Nations Security Council, where penalties, such as a possible oil embargo, would be discussed.
But European envoys familiar with the meeting on Friday, involving the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, and John Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, said that the United States did not discourage Britain, France and Germany from making the latest offer to Iran.
"They didn't jump on the train physically," said a European official, describing the American attitude, adding: "There was nobody who told us, don't go ahead."
As a result, a meeting is expected as early as Thursday, perhaps in Vienna, the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The meeting featured the circulation of a four-page paper prepared by leaders of the European Union outlining an effort to engage Iran. European diplomats said the paper, prepared by Britain, France and Germany, was also endorsed by the entire EU, though not formally by all 25 countries.
According to officials familiar with the paper, it calls for "a two-track approach" of engagement and confrontation. If the engagement does not work, then the paper proposes that the countries of the world mount a program of pressure on Iran by going to the UN Security Council to discuss sanctions.
The approach of engagement has a short-term and a long-term component, the diplomats said.
In the short term, it calls for Iran to suspend enrichment of its uranium, which it promised to do last year before backing off of in protest over more demands that it disclose its nuclear activities to the agency.
The suspension of uranium enrichment would have to be "sustained," a European official said - meaning, in effect, permanent, although the word "permanent" is avoided because a permanent arrangement for Iran to drop its nuclear weapons ambitions would be worked out in the long term.
The paper also proposes that in the long term other issues will be addressed, first by the Europeans and eventually by the United States. These would involve human rights in Iran, a discussion on terrorism and Iran's suspected support of terrorist groups, economic ties, political and security relationships in the Middle East, including a role in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
-------- terrorism
Sabotage at Three Mile Island?
Investigators suspected sabotage at Three Mile Island
Three Mile Island Alert
http://www.tmia.com/tmisab.html
There is evidence to suggest that sabotage played a role in the "accident" at Three Mile Island. (This publication details only the evidence that has been documented by official government or NRC investigations.) Several days before the emergency, an unannounced NRC inspection of the plant's physical protection discovered access control infractions. Previous announced inspections found TMI to be in compliance with regulations. At the time of the accident, Three Mile Island was not required to enforce the then new "two-man rule." The two-man rule was designed to prevent a worker from being alone in vital areas. Additionally, TMI had not met the deadline for other newly required security upgrades.
In the first moments of the accident, emergency feedwater was prevented from entering the system because the "emergency feedwater valves" were closed. Indicator lights on a control room panel should have alerted the operators that these valves were closed. The two lights were hidden from view by a maintenance tag that was covering them. The valves are supposed to stay open so that emergency pumps can deliver water to the steam generators if the normal circulation is interrupted. The steam generators remove enormous amounts of heat from the reactor. Without feedwater, the steam generators boiled dry within two minutes. The temperature and pressure soared inside the reactor vessel.
The licensee's internal investigation did not consider intentional closure. The NRC Office of Inspection and Enforcement reasoned that it would take a monumental effort to interview each of the more than 750 people who had access to the emergency feedwater valves. The NRC claimed its investigators from the Office of Inspection and Enforcement were sensitive to any evidence of sabotage. But there is some disturbing and eye-opening evidence that wasn't criminally investigated. In fact, the NRC never even discovered the initiating event.
THE INITIAL PROBLEM
The accident started at exactly 4:00:37am on March 28, 1979. This was precisely to the minute of the one year anniversary of start-up or what is known as criticality. This aroused suspicions of worker celebrations involving drinking. The workers testified that they had their normal coffee and doughnuts only.
The trouble started somewhere in the condensate polisher system. Some unknown event caused the polisher outlet valves to close. There are several ways that a saboteur could have made this happen without being detected by plant telemetry or subsequent investigations.
The NRC Office of Investigation and Enforcement hypothesized that the initial failure was a result of a stuck-open check valve allowing water to pass into an instrument control air line and thereby cause the condensate polisher outlet valves to close. The investigators tried to duplicate this condition to test their theory. Despite pouring 15 gallons of water into this line, they could not cause the valves to shut. But, this remained the best guess as to what the first failure might have been. Because the NRC believed that the accident could have been averted at several points if human errors weren't committed, they were satisfied with not knowing the initiating event. Still, the investigators did conclude, "The problems encountered with the condensate system and condenser vacuum significantly detracted the operator's attention from the accident."
Then in the first seconds of the accident, a condensate polisher pump failure was followed by the immediate shutdown of its paired pump. The NRC investigators reported that a "wiring error" caused this second pump to quit when the first one had. A criminal investigator never assumes that an error is "only an error."
A broken air line in the condensate polisher system was ignored by NRC investigators who believed that air was prevented from leaking out by the actuation of another automatic valve. But, at least one worker testified that he had heard the broken line blowing air during the emergency. The licensee claimed that the air line was broken by a water hammer which caused equipment to shift two or three feet. (A water hammer is a sudden pressure change or a slug of water like the one that can rattle your household pipes when turning off a water faucet.) The NRC investigators reported that based on their visual inspection, the air line movement was not as great as the licensee claimed. The cause was never determined or considered necessary.
An hour into the accident, workers needed to re-establish water circulation by opening a bypass valve. The handwheel was missing from this important valve. A search for the handwheel delayed bypassing the condensate polisher system where the failed pumps were located.
The radiological releases began when a safety valve on top of the reactor failed to close. This valve opened to relieve the rapidly increasing pressure. Control room operators did not know that the Pilot Operated Relief Valve (PORV) was still open because the telemetry system was improperly engineered. The operators were fooled by a panel light which only indicated that an electrical signal had been sent to close the valve and not its actual status. Thousands of gallons of water in the form of steam spilled out of the reactor in what is known as a loss of coolant accident. For a short while the contamination was contained inside the reactor building. Although these valves had failed before at other plants, the PORV at Three Mile Island has yet to be inspected. A TMI engineer who believes that the valve simply failed said that sabotage could not be dismissed.
(Eighteen months before the TMI accident, the reactor at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio started going out of control in what was actually a precursor to the Three Mile Island emergency. The PORV stuck open and operators struggled to understand the situation. Another design problem caused confusion about the water level inside the reactor. This problem reoccurred at TMI since both reactors were designed by Babcock & Wilcox. Davis-Besse was operating at only 9 percent compared to 97 percent at TMI when the troubles began. The Davis-Besse operators were able to return the plant to a safe condition. Afterwards, an investigation of the reactor revealed that an electrical relay had been removed from the PORV. Someone suggested sabotage. The reactor manufacturer finally decided that the relay was probably "borrowed" for usage in another part of the plant since it was compatible with several systems.)
The highly radioactive water steaming out of the TMI reactor would normally be pumped into an immense holding tank inside the reactor building. For some unknown reason the valve for this sump pump had been switched so that the contaminated water was transferred into the auxiliary building. From here the radioactivity was released to the environs through open vents.
INADEQUATE INVESTIGATION
In June 1979, an NRC special review group conceded that the NRC investigators of the TMI accident had "no training in investigative techniques or knowledge of the laws of evidence or criminal procedures." The NRC investigators did not have the authority to administer oaths and felt that the quality of the information they had obtained would have been enhanced if oaths were given. The NRC actually did have the authority to administer oaths and didn't appear to know this until after the interviews were conducted.
The report also said:
".... a trained investigator should have been dispatched with the initial response team to organize and retain portions of the supportive evidence (notes, logs, etc.) which were lost during the initial days of the accident."
Additionally, the review group found that the NRC investigation was hindered by the delay of receiving transcripts of worker interviews
(Also noteworthy is that the control room alarm printer fell behind by almost two hours. The printer was designed to store alarms in its memory until they can be printed. So many alarms were going off in the early stages of the emergency that the control room operators had to dump the stored alarms to get to the current ones. The information was forever lost.)
A technical investigator for the President's Commission on the accident questioned the adequacy and efforts of the Office of Inspection and Enforcement. Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigators had not even arrived at the plant until two weeks had passed. He also questioned the licensee's internal investigation.
The President's Commission obtained an internal TMI memo which had been written ten months before the accident. It said, "It's time to really do something on this problem before a very serious accident occurs. If the polishers take themselves off line at any high power level the resulting damage could be very significant."
The Chief Counsel for the President's Commission requested the licensee to examine its personnel files for "any person who might have long-standing grievances against the company." This was requested specifically as an attempt to discover workers who might have had incentive to close the emergency feedwater valves. Interrogation of the five workers who were identified by the company was considered.
On August 7, 1979 the President's Commission requested the FBI to determine the feasibility of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the closed valves. The President's Commission had the authority to ask for assistance from any Executive agency and by vote had decided that the FBI was needed. But, the FBI went right back to the NRC which informed them that human errors and equipment failures were to blame for the accident; therefore, an investigation was not necessary.
An encrypted telegram sent by the FBI to the White House Situation Room around April 6, 1979 informed the President that sabotage was not responsible for the accident according to the NRC's Harold Denton. There was no reasonable way for Denton to have drawn this conclusion. The telegram which is now in the National Archives is labeled "encrypted for transmission purposes only." Portions of it are blacked-out even though it has been unclassified.
On August 15, 1979 the President's Commission asked NASA to perform an inspection of the condensate polisher system. Three Mile Island did not even have the "as built" technical drawings needed for a proper inspection. How could the NRC inspectors have done a thorough job without these? The fact was that they didn't. Investigators from NASA's Office of Flight Assurance found wires that were disconnected at five of the eight polisher panels. Operating and engineering personnel didn't know when or why they were disconnected. They also noted that an instrument air valve on the back of the polishing system control panel permits the air to be shut off and thus cause the outlet valves to close. Paul Leventhal, co-director of the US Senate investigation of the Three Mile Island accident (now director of The Nuclear Control Institute), wanted to perform a special sabotage investigation. "The initiating event was always so mysterious in that so little was known about it," Leventhal divulged in an interview. "I wanted to hire someone like a former FBI agent to do an investigation but the Minority co-director objected."
Just four days into the accident, the FBI had already announced that sabotage was ruled out and the investigation was closed. Maybe they were trying to quiet the fears of the public which had just seen the new film "The China Syndrome." (Some people actually wrote to the NRC accusing Hollywood of a sick publicity stunt.) In actuality, the FBI was planning to meet with confidential sources who believed that sabotage was to blame. An openly public source was Pennsylvania State Representative Joseph Zeller.
Both the Senate and President's Commission investigations were called off the hunt and instructed that a criminal investigation was not their responsibility. It is not entirely unusual for a valve or switch to be in the wrong position, but this many "errors" should have been investigated for criminal activity.
Soon after the emergency, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory concluded:
"There was very little protection against insider sabotage. ...There was very little or no control of the whereabouts of people inside the vital area; so it cannot be said that sabotage to the auxiliary feedwater system was impossible."
and
"...some vital area doors that should have been locked or guarded were found to be open and unguarded. Actually, there was very poor protection against the sabotage actions of the insider."
and
"The conclusion can be drawn that the protection against the activities of an insider is still inadequate at TMI..."
And an embarrassing incident did happen several months after the TMI accident when a newspaper reporter was hired as a security guard. He told of entering the control room unchallenged (only armed guards were permitted access). There was no lock on the door and a piece of clothesline hung where the doorknob should have been. A college textbook used this incident as an example of poor security. The book cited the reporter's headline -- "Three Mile Island: It's a Paradise Island for the Saboteur." General Public Utilities sought an injunction to block publication of the article on the grounds that it could compromise national security.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
NRC extends Yankee review
Rutland Herald
By Carolyn Handy
October 16, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041016/NEWS/410160391&SearchID=73187247190468
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it needs more time to review a proposed 20 percent power increase at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Entergy Nuclear, which proposed the power boost a year ago, was told Friday that the NRC review will extend beyond the original Jan. 31 completion date.
Entergy was told that the information it had provided to the NRC did not "provide sufficient assurance" that the reactor's steam dryer could maintain its structural integrity during a power increase.
Entergy spokesman Laurence Smith said Friday he agreed with the NRC that safety is the most important concern in any decision about a power increase, or uprate.
"We are committed to working with both the NRC and Vermont regulators to ensure that all safety issues are fully addressed before the uprate is approved," he said.
"Steam dryer cracking has been an issue at a number of uprated United States nuclear power plants over the past few years," Smith said. "These issues are not specific to Vermont Yankee, they are industrywide."
He said Entergy modified its steam dryer last spring to "substantially strengthen it and to provide added confidence in its ability to perform properly under uprated conditions."
In addition, engineers at the power plant have also worked with nuclear and aerospace industry experts and an academic specialist "to develop leading-edge analytical methods and models to test and ensure the safety and reliability of our steam dryer under uprated conditions."
Smith said the models would provide the information to satisfy the NRC on steam dryer issues.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said that Yankee's steam dryer continues to be an area of concern and that the commission had asked Entergy for more information on the dryer.
"We've let them know we will not be able to complete our review within the time frame we projected," he said. "We're now looking at an extension of at least several months."
Sheehan said "some issues surfaced" during an engineering inspection in August that needed further clarification. The results of that inspection are scheduled to be made public Nov. 9, he said.
"At that point, we will be providing the utility with our preliminary findings," he said. "It would be premature for us to discuss publicly what our findings are from that inspection."
The NRC is still in the midst of its review, according to Sheehan.
"We made it very clear that we will not permit this power uprate until all the safety issues have been fully addressed," he said.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will conduct hearings at 9 a.m. on Oct. 21 and 22 at the Vermont Agricultural Business Education Center on Guilford Road in Brattleboro.
Because the review completion date by the NRC will be delayed, a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards subcommittee in mid-November will be rescheduled, as will a full committee meeting of the ACRS board in December.
Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the New England Coalition, said he was skeptical of the NRC's real motives in ordering the delay. He listed three possible reasons for the delay.
First, he said he had reason to believe that new safety issues were discovered during the recent inspection. The NRC may be stalling on the exit meeting or publishing an inspection report, Shadis said, and may be waiting to see if the NEC and the state would get a hearing on safety issues.
Second, Shadis said the NRC is trying to do away with rules that insure adequate reactor cooling under emergency conditions.
Third, he said the NRC may be hoping to avoid releasing information regarding safety concerns until the NRC hearing process with the New England Coalition and the state of Vermont is completed.
"In 25 years of dealing with the NRC, I have learned that when the NRC comes swimming by, usually all you can see is the fin sticking above the water," he said.
Shadis said that according to the NRC, the steam dryer is not a safety-related item. He said that it was composed of several tons worth of steel in the reactor.
"To have pieces of it break loose and hit critical valves, of course it's a safety problem," he said.
David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said he was not surprised that the schedule had been extended. The NRC has been considering the integrity of the steam dryer in uprate conditions all along, he said.
"It shows the NRC is being thorough and doing their job," he said. "They are also extending the time because of the special engineering inspection that was... conducted in August and September because they want to be sure the findings they made in that inspection are resolved before the uprate is granted."
O'Brien said he did not know the findings of the inspection because the information is confidential until the NRC's report is completed and released.
Contact Carolyn Handy at carolyn.handy@rutlandherald.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Taliban leaders were the big losers in vote
October 16, 2004
By Rachel Mararjee
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldbriefings.htm
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban leader Mullah Omar was not on the crowded Afghan presidential ballot, but he may wind up the biggest loser of all from last Saturday's vote.
The failure of the fundamentalist Islamist movement that once ruled Afghanistan to disrupt the country's first presidential election will demoralize the militia and hurt its efforts to attract new followers, U.S. and Afghan officials said this week.
For months, Taliban leaders warned they would mark Election Day with bloodshed and chaos, but the threats turned out to be hollow. Attacks were limited to isolated land-mine blasts and minor clashes.
Afghan security forces stopped a large fuel truck loaded with rockets and explosives on the outskirts of southern Kandahar the day before the vote. The Taliban suffered the biggest casualties over the election period when 24 insurgents were killed in central Uruzgan province in a U.S. air strike that same day.
Col. Dick Pedersen, commander of U.S.-led forces in southern Afghanistan, said the unexpectedly large turnout on voting day showed that backing for the Taliban had waned.
"I think the Taliban have lost popular support and the Afghan people have spoken," he told reporters in Kandahar, the southern province that was the spiritual home of the Taliban regime until its ouster by an American-led military campaign in 2001.
Afghan officials and Western security analysts said it was too early to write off the Taliban faction, but agreed the very visible failure to carry out its threats was a blow to the militia.
Kandahar Gov. Mohammed Yusuf Pashtun said the success of the voting would demoralize the militia and damage its ability to recruit young militants.
"The Taliban are still there. They are not destroyed, but we hope the successful election will demoralize them. I am talking about the small groups, the underdogs," he said.
The Taliban's senior leadership numbered only about 100 and relied heavily on their ability to find young recruits, Mr. Pashtun said. But he predicted they would continue guerrilla insurgency in Afghanistan's ethnically Pashtun south and southeast.
Afghanistan interim President Hamid Karzai had been in talks with Taliban commanders in the weeks leading up to the election, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
The government's effort to bring moderate Taliban leaders into the political process could have undermined their ability to conduct attacks on election day.
"Apart from the very tight security, the other factor which could be behind this, in my opinion, is that there have been some negotiations between the government and the Taliban to convince them not to disrupt the polls," said Hamidullah Tarzi, a former finance minister and leading political analyst.
Mr. Karzai, widely seen as the favorite to win the election after the votes are counted in the coming weeks, had to draw his support from the same Pashtun communities in the south and southeast that traditionally have supported the Taliban faction.
"If there had been any disruption in the south and southeast, the victim could have been Karzai," said Mr. Tarzi, adding that attacks in the more peaceful north could have benefited Mr. Karzai's main presidential rival, Yunus Qanuni.
Western security personnel in the south cautioned that support from more than 18,000 U.S.-led troops was crucial in helping the Afghan army and police curb Taliban violence on Election Day.
"Now that the election is over, if the U.S. [officials] take their eyes off the ball, the Taliban can easily start attacking government officials in southern provinces who are very poorly protected," said a Western security official who worked on the election.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Afghanistan this year, including several U.S. troops attacked during the run-up to the election. There were also assassination attempts on Mr. Karzai and his running mate, Ahmad Zia Massoud.
But the sharp rise in attacks on Election Day, expected by officials, failed to materialize.
--------
Canadian Sees a Long Haul in Afghanistan
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36663-2004Oct15.html
OTTAWA, Oct. 15 -- International forces should expect to stay in Afghanistan for "10 to 20 years," according to a Canadian commander who helped lead foreign troops in Kabul until February.
"We ignore Afghanistan at our peril," said Maj. Gen. Andrew Leslie. He pronounced the election in Afghanistan "a tremendous success," although he acknowledged that the fledgling government would be fragile and require international backing for many years.
Maj. Gen. Andrew Leslie contrasted approaches to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Leslie, 46, who became deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force in August 2003, said the mission's successes in Afghanistan were attributable in part to its cooperation with the existing power structures in the country, in contrast to Iraq, where the United States conducted a "de-Baathification" program after it invaded the country, removing former government officials and military and police officers.
The 8,000 ISAF troops from 36 nations are largely responsible for security in Kabul, while U.S. troops operate outside the capital. Canada had 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan for a year but rotated all but 700 out of the country at the end of their tours in August. Leslie, now on a sabbatical to complete a doctorate in war studies, spoke at a conference of security experts in Ottawa and in an interview afterward.
In 1992, "when Canada went into Bosnia, we thought it would be three or four years, and we are just pulling out now," Leslie said. "In Bosnia, the level of devastation was less than in Afghanistan, the numbers of dead less, and the general circumstances were better. The West and NATO are looking at a 10- to 20-year commitment in Afghanistan."
He said international troops avoided being widely resented as occupiers, as U.S. troops are in Iraq, in part because "we made it very clear that we were there as guests of the Afghanistan government. They asked us in, and we are working with them and for them.
"In Iraq, the police, army, bureaucrats, were all terminated. From necessity, that means you are starting from scratch. In Afghanistan, that didn't happen. It was two different approaches."
Leslie declined to comment on the charge by the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, that the Bush administration had fumbled the chance to capture Osama bin Laden in northern Afghanistan. But he said that "the land there is so rugged and riddled with so many caves and tunnels, with tribal links and ethnic links and clan links. If there's any hole possible, those guys will get away."
--------
Two American G.I.'s Die in Afghanistan Blast
October 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Attacks.html?hp&ex=1097985600&en=91e455065f81fdf2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A bomb killed two American soldiers and wounded three others in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Saturday, and an attack in an eastern province killed three children and two others on the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The attacks in the wake of historic presidential elections earlier this month were a reminder of the insecurity still threatening Afghanistan's democratic experiment three years after the fall of the Taliban.
Ballot counting from the vote gathered speed after a one-day break, and interim leader Hamid Karzai streaked ahead of his rivals in early returns.
Of 344,000 votes tallied by early Saturday evening, Karzai, the U.S.-backed favorite, had captured 71 percent. That preliminary result was based on 4 percent of the ballots cast.
The U.S. military on Saturday said a homemade bomb hit an American Humvee jeep on patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan on Thursday, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, one of them critically.
Karzai condemned the Friday assault in eastern Kunar province in which a truck was set on fire and then a remote-controlled bomb detonated, killing at least three children and a policeman. He described it as a terrorist atrocity committed by ``enemies of Islam.''
The provincial governor said five people were killed, but he provided few details.
There was also an attack in Kabul, with four rockets landing in the capital Saturday evening. Three struck houses near the airport, injuring one woman, police and residents said.
While polling day, Oct. 9, was mostly peaceful despite threats by Taliban-led rebels to sabotage the vote, their insurgency still simmers, particularly in the country's lawless south and east. About 1,000 people, many of them insurgents, have died in political violence so far this year.
Some 2,500 election staff resumed work Saturday morning at eight counting centers across Afghanistan after a day off to mark the start of Ramadan.
Final results are expected at the end of October, although it should be clear who has won within days -- and whether the victor secures the majority needed to avoid a run-off.
Karzai is expected to maintain his lead.
In Washington, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the election was a triumph for Afghans and international forces protecting them, but only one step on the road to stability.
``It could take as long as 10 years for it to be a truly successful country in terms of security, in terms of economic development, in terms of being a successful democratic state,'' Khalilzad told reporters Friday.
Khalilzad also suggested that training the new Afghan national army could be accelerated to reduce the need for U.S. and NATO troops. The current plan is to bring the Afghan army up to 70,000 troops from the current 15,000 in five years.
Afghans are aching for peace after conflicts dating back to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, and the U.N.-backed election, which cost about $200 million to stage, has generated huge interest.
A top election official has estimated that despite Taliban intimidation and bad weather, about 8 million of the 10.5 million registered voters cast ballots. Counting began slowly on Thursday after five days of delays as a panel of foreign experts probed electoral fraud allegations submitted by the 16 candidates.
Of 343,727 valid votes tallied in half the 34 provinces, Karzai won 244,128 or 71 percent of the total, the official election Web site said.
Former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni had 15.4 percent; ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum had 4.3 percent.
At the Kabul counting center, set up in a half-built Afghan army barracks, observers for the candidates were watching the count closely.
Abdul Qudus Sayeq, a representative of Qanooni, alleged that ballot boxes had been stuffed in favor of Karzai and ballots cast for Qanooni had been deliberately spoiled -- but was unable to explain where or when this happened.
``We've seen lots of papers marked with different pens'' from the ones issued to polling stations, Sayeq said. ``The new marks are all in favor of one candidate.''
U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the last of the ballot boxes -- which have been transported from far-flung areas by plane, helicopter, truck and even donkey -- were expected to reach counting centers by Sunday.
Karzai has led the predominantly Muslim country since the U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001. Many Afghans see him as a bridge to the country's international backers and a leader untainted by the fighting. But they are impatient for him to deliver on pledges to rebuild their impoverished country.
Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Afghan election results: http://www.afg-electionresults.org
--------
US trying to speed up creation of 70,000 strong Afghan army: envoy
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041015231754.jhavl4lx.html
The United States is trying to fast-track Afghanistan's objective of having a 70,000-strong army within five years, the American envoy to Kabul said here Friday.
"We are looking at how ... to get to the 70,000 (target) as soon as possible," Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said.
"The current plan is to get there in five additional years. We could do that at a faster rate. We are looking at that."
The Afghan army is more than 15,000 strong today while the police force has more than 30,000 trained personnel, according to the envoy.
Khalilzad said German-led efforts to train Afghan police personnel would also be stepped up, based on lessons learned in Iraq, where training of local policemen was being boosted.
Last year, 20,000 Afghan police personnel were trained and "we are looking at ways to make that police training program into an effective program.
"Our preferred approach is to get the Afghans to stand on their own feet as soon as possible," he said. "We could get at that number sooner if we put more resources in."
Khalilzad said "clearly for some time to come, there will be a role for US and coalition forces and NATO" in Afghanistan with an option to bring about a unified force.
At present NATO-run and US-led forces in Afghanistan were separate entities.
The United States has nearly 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. They are still seeking to pacify the country's southeastern border regions three years after the fall of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime after a US-led invasion.
NATO has a 9,000-strong International Security Assistance force primary involved in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts.
Khalizad said it would "take as long as 10 years" for Afghanistan "to be a truly successful country in terms of its security, in terms of economic development, in terms of being a successful democratic state."
He said al-Qaeda and the Taliban militia, ousted from power following a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, failed to stage "spectacular attacks" as part of a strategy to disrupt the Afghan elections Saturday.
In the city of Kandahar, for example, he said foreign and Afghan forces managed to detain a tanker truck laden with five tonnes of explosive material.
"God forbid if that tanker trucker exploded in downtown Kandahar. Quite a lot of people would have been killed," Khalilzad said.
-------- africa
U.N. Says Sudan Death Toll Reaches 70,000
October 16, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/international/africa/16nations.html?pagewanted=all
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 15 - The United Nations health agency said Friday that the death toll in refugee camps in the Darfur region of Sudan had reached 70,000, and that people would continue dying at the rate of 10,000 a month as long as the international community did not provide more money.
David Nabarro, director of the crisis action group of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, said despite the international attention Darfur had attracted, the United Nations was not receiving the money it needed to curb deaths caused by malnutrition and disease.
"Every day in newspapers in the U.S., Europe and Japan, there is coverage of the suffering in Darfur, yet we don't have a significant enough popular perception around the world of the enormity of that suffering, and the United Nations cannot get the funding for this priority program," Mr. Nabarro said in a telephone interview.
The United Nations has received only half of the $300 million it needs, he said, while with full financing it could reduce the current mortality rate by half.
At United Nations headquarters, the United States was discussing moving Security Council meetings on Sudan to Nairobi next month, when it will hold the rotating presidency of the Council. American diplomats said the purpose would be to speed the conclusion of talks in Kenya aimed at ending a decades-long civil war in the south of Sudan.
The American ambassador, John C. Danforth, was President Bush's special envoy to those talks, and the United Nations believes that getting a peace agreement put into effect in the south would help resolve the conflict in Darfur, in western Sudan.
Several Security Council ambassadors said Mr. Danforth had discussed the suggestion with them and was receiving support for it. Asked about the proposal, Richard A. Grenell, Mr. Danforth's spokesman, would say only that "during the month of November, while we hold the presidency, we are exploring ways to highlight the Sudan issue."
The conflict in Darfur has forced 1.4 million villagers from their homes into displacement camps, and 200,000 of them have fled across the border to Chad. The United States has said that the government-supported killings and mass evictions constitute genocide, and Secretary General Kofi Annan has created an international commission to compile a report in three months on whether genocide has occurred.
Mr. Nabarro said that because of a lack of money, relief workers in Darfur were unable to distribute aid in helicopters and had to rely on trucks, which broke down. He said the agency needed 10 charter aircraft but could only afford four. The agency has been borrowing money to meet its needs of $1.5 million a month, he said, but could not continue doing so past mid-December.
"We are running on a threadbare, hand-to-mouth existence, and if the plight of these people in Darfur is as important to the international community as it seems to be, then we would have expected more long-term support," he said.
-------- arms
Turkey negotiating purchase of 350 German tanks: report
BERLIN (AFP)
Oct 16, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041016143646.d95edd0e.html
Unofficial talks on the sale of 350 German Leopard II tanks to Turkey have reached an advanced stage, said a report in a news magazine to appear Monday, in what could mark a decisive change in Germany's arms export policy.
A Turkish delegation inspected German arms stocks some weeks ago and current negotiations were focusing on the price, said the report in Der Spiegel, made available in advance.
Under German law, arms cannot be exported to countries where they might be used to aggravate domestic conflicts.
In the past Germany has refused to deliver tanks to Turkey because they might have been used against the restless Kurdish minority in southeastern Turkey.
The Turkish government would not make an official request for the purchase of tanks until assured of a go-ahead from the German government, Der Spiegel said.
A German defence ministry spokesman declined to comment, saying only there had been no official purchase request from Turkey.
The Greens, junior members of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition government, have previously vetoed German tank sales to Turkey because of the situation in the Kurdish region.
Recalling this, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a prominent Greens leader, also noted in an interview with Der Spiegel that his party had expressed past misgivings about Turkey's human rights record.
"If things change, we will reassess the situation in the light of new realities," Fischer said.
There were "clear standards by which as a general rule arms cooperation can occur between NATO and European Union partners."
Germany is a member of both NATO and the EU, while Turkey is a NATO member but has yet to fulfil its ambition of EU membership.
This ambition received a boost this month from an EU commission report recommending a start to membership negotiations.
A German foreign ministry spokeswoman said last Monday Germany was considering relaxing restrictions on arms exports to Turkey after Ankara began EU membership negotiations.
According to a report in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Fischer no longer supports restrictions on arms exports to Turkey, because these would contradict the EU recommendation that Turkey be allowed to start accession talks.
Leaders of the 25 EU countries will convene on December 17 to decide whether Turkey should start negotiations.
-------- china
Students' freedoms eyed in China
October 16, 2004
By Christopher Bodeen
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041015-114356-2075r.htm
SHANGHAI - Warning of threats from "decadent lifestyles," China's ruling Communist Party yesterday demanded heavier political indoctrination of university students and stricter control over campus organizations and Internet bulletin boards.
The demands were spelled out in a document excerpted on the front page of the People's Daily and other party newspapers. It complained of "many weak links" in political education.
"Most students still love the Communist Party, love the motherland and love socialism, but changes in the situation at home and abroad are sternly challenging their ideological and political thinking," the document said.
A former head of the party's youth league, President Hu Jintao has emphasized traditional socialist conformity and strict party control during his two years as party chief. Independent-minded media have been punished, dissidents rounded up and further measures erected to detect and trace subversive speech on the Internet.
The document demands more student participation in compulsory military training and tougher party control over student groups, especially among new types of campus organizations such as online communities.
It singled out campus Internet bulletin boards, among the freest forums for discussion in China, where criticism of the government can bring a long prison term. Such forums must be made to serve the goals of political indoctrination, it said.
"Resolutely guard against the pernicious influence on students of all forms of harmful culture and decadent lifestyles," the article said.
Other measures included offering free museum tickets to further "patriotic education," as well as encouraging government offices and businesses to support student charity work.
Many on the Internet greeted the announcement with disdain, citing recent campus scandals involving bribe-taking administrators.
"Shouldn't we first shore up ideological education among administrators so they won't feel embarrassed to teach their students?" read one unsigned posting on the popular Sina.com Web site.
-------- haiti
Aristide backers clash with police
October 16, 2004
By Amy Bracken
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041016-122656-7926r.htm
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Heavy gunfire erupted yesterday when police streamed into a slum stronghold of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as his loyalists blocked streets with flaming debris to mark the 10th anniversary of Mr. Aristide's return from his first exile.
Tensions surged in the capital, where two weeks of shootouts and beheadings have killed at least 48 persons. Former Haitian soldiers, who hold sway over much of the countryside, are threatening to deploy into Port-au-Prince over the objections of the interim government, which is backed by an overextended and beleaguered United Nations peacekeeping force.
A U.N. spokesman said yesterday the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, which has been operating at less than half its authorized strength, will receive several hundred new members by the end of October.
A unit of 125 police from China is expected to arrive tomorrow, Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York. A further 622 Sri Lankan troops are expected from Oct. 25 to Oct. 29 and troops making up a Spanish-Moroccan battalion are also expected at the end of the month.
The U.S. State Department urged all nonessential embassy personnel and family members to leave the country. The department also upgraded its travel warning for Haiti, saying moving in and outside the capital can be hazardous because police are ineffective and peacekeepers are not fully deployed.
The violence is crippling a massive humanitarian mission to help about 200,000 homeless survivors of Tropical Storm Jeanne in northwestern Gonaives city, where several relief agencies have suspended operations, Oxfam spokeswoman Maite Alvarez said yesterday.
It was not clear who was doing the shooting yesterday as police in cars and on foot entered the barricaded Bel Air slum.
A few hundred supporters of Mr. Aristide's Lavalas Family party held a peaceful demonstration there earlier, Haiti's Radio Plus reported, broadcasting chants of "Only Lavalas, no matter what happens."
The crackle of automatic gunfire also exploded in two other neighborhoods.
Aristide backers are demanding his return from exile as they mark his restoration to power in 1994 through the intervention of 20,000 U.S. troops who ended three years of brutal military rule.
Mr. Aristide fled again this past Feb. 29 as former soldiers leading a bloody rebellion neared Port-au-Prince.
-------- iraq
Car bomb kills 10 as Ramadan starts
October 16, 2004
From combined dispatches
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041015-114346-1940r.htm
BAGHDAD - U.S. jets struck targets in the insurgent bastion Fallujah again yesterday, and U.S. officials said 10 persons - including a family of four - were killed when a car bomb exploded near a Baghdad police station in a bloody start to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
American and Iraqi officials fear a repeat of the surge in attacks that ushered in Ramadan last year. Iraqi Sunni Muslims and many Shi'ites began Ramadan yesterday; other Iraqi Shi'ites start fasting today.
U.S. jets and artillery pounded targets in the southern and eastern part of Fallujah - the major stronghold of Sunni insurgents - around sundown yesterday as residents were taking the traditional meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan.
One resident, Salah Abd, said American troops had sealed off major roads out of the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, preventing residents from leaving.
There were no reports of casualties from the evening raids. Dr. Rafia Hiyad of the Fallujah General Hospital said three persons were killed and seven others injured during attacks the previous night.
In southwest Baghdad, a car packed with 300 pounds of explosives blew up yesterday near a police station. The U.S. military said 10 civilians were killed, including a family of four who were driving by at the time of the blast. Iraqi hospital officials said 14 persons were wounded.
"This is an act of terrorists," said Lt. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division. "These attacks kill innocent Iraqi people trying to live their lives in peace."
U.S. officials indicated the bombing of Fallujah was not a prelude to a major offensive into the city that officials have said they might start sometime this fall.
The attacks began Thursday after peace talks between the Iraqi officials and city leaders broke down over the government's demand that they hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken responsibility for suicide bombings and beheading foreign hostages.
U.S. troops detained Fallujah's top negotiator in the talks, witnesses said.
Khaled al-Jumeili, an Islamic cleric, was arrested as he left a mosque after Friday prayers in a village about 10 miles south of Fallujah, they said. There was no confirmation from U.S. authorities.
Fallujah fell under control of radical clerics and their armed mujahideen fighters after the Marines lifted their three-week siege of the city in April.
In a statement read yesterday in Sunni mosques in Baghdad and elsewhere, Fallujah clerics threatened a civil-disobedience campaign across the country if the Americans try to overrun the city.
Some Iraqis elsewhere in the country said an offensive is the best thing that could happen to Fallujah, a town that has become synonymous with Iraq's insurgency over the past 18 months.
"[Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi must attack Fallujah in whatever way necessary because they are the main reason for instability in Iraq," said Iman Jadoa, 40, a clerk from the southern Shi'ite city of Basra.
"They must be made to pay," she said.
Others questioned why no suicide car bombs ever hit Fallujah, and said the city needed to be taught a lesson if Iraq was to be peaceful for the election.
"Why are there no bombings in Fallujah? It's because a mosquito doesn't sting itself," said Samkoo Mohammed-Ali, a university student in the peaceful Kurdish city of Suleimaniya.
Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group took responsibility for Thursday's twin bombings inside Baghdad's heavily guarded green zone - home to U.S. officials and the Iraqi leadership - which killed six persons, including three American civilians, and wounded 27 others, mostly Iraqis. A fourth American was missing and presumed dead.
Shi'ite militiamen, meanwhile, continued to turn in weapons to police in Baghdad's Sadr City district under a five-day cash-for-weapons campaign. The head of the drive said it had been extended for two days because of the overwhelming response.
The deal with followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was intended to halt weeks of fighting with U.S. forces in the sprawling slums in northeastern Baghdad.
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Fallujah Strikes Herald Possible Attack
U.S., Iraq Move To Retake City From Insurgents
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 16, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34612-2004Oct15?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 15 -- Sharply intensified U.S. strikes on Fallujah, which continued Friday night, were aimed at preparing for a possible military offensive that would return control of the insurgent-held city to Iraq's interim government, U.S. officials said.
"We'll continue to do these operations for the next few days, and then we'll see where we are," said a U.S. official in Baghdad. "It's pretty much all what the Iraqis want."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described 12 hours of overnight strikes by American helicopters, fighter-bombers, field artillery and tanks as "shaping operations." Military commanders use the term as shorthand for battlefield preparation, combat operations specifically intended to remove enemy strong points in advance of an assault.
The new wave of strikes, which also included U.S. and Iraqi infantry firing toward the city from its outskirts, was bracketed by clear signals that Iraq's interim government had lost patience with efforts to avoid a final assault on the city through negotiations.
The first explosions were heard two hours after a senior Iraqi official threatened to "smash" the city if it did not surrender foreign fighters. The State Department on Friday officially designated as terrorists the fighters led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who heads the Monotheism and Jihad group.
Also Friday, a Fallujah cleric who had been the most prominent member of a delegation negotiating for a peaceful handover of the city was arrested. Khalid Hamoud Jumaili, who heads an insurgent group known as Mohammad's First Army, was taken into custody after Friday prayers at a mosque in a town 10 miles south of Fallujah.
"I think it's more military than political for sure," a U.S. diplomat said of the arrest. The diplomat asked not to be identified further because the interview had not been cleared by his superiors in Washington. "Not to say that when it's done, this won't be seen as a turning point in the political process here."
Officials stopped short of saying that a final decision had been made to retake Fallujah, a city of 300,000 that has been controlled by a volatile mix of local insurgents and foreign fighters since April, when a Marine offensive was abruptly halted on orders from the White House. Since political authority was turned back to the Iraqis in June, the final say on major U.S. military operations has resided with the government of the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
But both camps gave the appearance of preparing for battle.
Residents reported that foreign fighters were returning to Fallujah from a smaller city, Hit, where they had gone in recent days. And officials in Baghdad privately emphasized the importance of finally asserting the central government's authority in a city that has been at once a potent symbol of insurgent defiance and an operational headquarters for bombings that have destabilized the capital for more than a year.
"If we have a fight in Fallujah, it's going to be very bloody and nasty," said another U.S. official. "Against that, one has to weigh how many car bombs you have in Baghdad that come from Fallujah."
Ten people were killed on Friday in southern Baghdad when a suicide car bomber veered toward a convoy of blue-and-white Iraqi police vehicles. The bomb, loaded with an estimated 300 pounds of explosives, killed four Iraqi laborers, a family of four and two other bystanders, according to a military statement. The bomb left an 18-by-12-foot crater nearly five feet deep in the street.
The attack came on the first day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, marked by fasting and -- last year in Baghdad -- a torrent of devastating car bomb attacks in the capital.
A U.S. military statement said the airstrikes were intended to preempt a similar wave of terror attacks by targeting buildings associated with Zarqawi. His group has asserted responsibility for kidnappings, beheadings, car bombings and other suicide strikes in Iraq, including bombings inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on Thursday that killed three American civilians and as many as six Iraqis.
"Operations in Fallujah will continue so long as terrorists remain in the city," the statement said.
Inside the city, terrified residents believed the final assault had begun.
Electricity and water were cut off to the city just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra. The only light was from illumination rounds, slowly descending flares that bathed the cityscape in an eerie half-glow.
In the hours that followed, U.S. firepower targeted the concrete blast walls and other fortifications left behind by American and Iraqi forces when they pulled out of the city in April and used as cover by the insurgents since.
M1-A1 Abrams tanks and other armor massed at the northern entrance of the city, while armored Humvees and other armor approached the city from the south. Neither column entered the city, but at about 3 a.m. Marines and members of the Iraqi National Guard exchanged small arms fire with insurgents on the city's outskirts.
Fallujah residents said the strikes destroyed 11 houses and badly damaged the Maathid mosque and the city's railway station. A family of 11 fleeing the bombing was killed when their vehicle was hit by a rocket residents said was fired by the Americans.
A new U.S. offensive on Fallujah would risk reigniting sympathies that made the city a symbol of a surging Iraqi nationalism when Marines besieged it in April. Civilian casualties were reported in the hundreds, and the city was widely seen here as being punished for the mutilation of U.S. contractors in an ambush.
At the time, foreign Arabs arriving in Fallujah were welcomed as reinforcements. In the months since, the extremists among them, led by Zarqawi, have alienated many local insurgents. But as foreign fighters returned from Hit, where they had battled Marines during the week, some residents said the looming anticipation of attack was renewing the alliance.
"We were happy when they left because we thought this was the end of the problem, but now we are happy they are back because of the threats of Allawi," said Mohammaed Saeed Farhan, a painter. "We wanted peace and that was the aim of the delegation."
But Iraqi and U.S. officials say that the intent behind taking military control of the city, even with U.S. armor leading the way, would be to fulfill the promise to hold nationwide elections in every major city in the country -- but especially in the Sunni Muslim centers north and west of the capital.
"To put it bluntly, we do not want a situation where insecurity in Sunni areas leads us to a crippled election," the diplomat said. "The country is changing. This is not April."
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Two American Soldiers Killed in Helicopter Crashes in Baghdad
October 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?hp&ex=1097985600&en=e6c126a51deb2e39&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two Army helicopters crashed late Saturday in Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and wounding two others, the U.S. command said. Explosions hit five churches in the capital as violence flared while Iraqi Muslims began marking the holy month of Ramadan.
Also Saturday, the U.S. command said four more American troops and an Iraqi interpreter were killed the day before by car bombs in the west and north of the country.
U.S. jets struck again in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, blasting what the American command said was a checkpoint operated by the feared Tawhid and Jihad terror movement of Jordanian-born extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Three people were killed, according to the Fallujah hospital.
The military action came despite an offer by community leaders in Fallujah to resume peace talks with the government if U.S. forces stop their attacks on the city and free their chief negotiator.
Fallujah hospital officials also said U.S. artillery shells fell on a house in Halabsa village, 10 miles southwest of the city, on Saturday killing a 3-year-old girl and injuring four family members.
Mortar shells exploded Saturday near Ibn al-Betar hospital, killing one employee and wounding three others, and in the parking lot of the Mansour Hotel, which houses the Chinese embassy and is home to foreign diplomats and journalists. No one was killed in the hotel attack.
The Army helicopters went down about 8:30 p.m. in southwestern Baghdad, the 1st Cavalry Division said. The division said the cause of the crashes had not been determined.
The U.S. military has lost at least 27 helicopters in Iraq since May 2003, many of them to hostile fire, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution.
Homemade bombs exploded in quick succession before dawn at the five churches in four separate Baghdad neighborhoods, causing no casualties but further alarming the Christian minority community already on edge over the perceived rise of Islamic militancy following last year's ouster of Saddam Hussein.
In August, coordinated attacks hit four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more in the first significant strike against Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians since the U.S. invasion began last year.
``It is a criminal act to make Iraq unstable and to create religious difficulties,'' the Rev. Zaya Yousef of St. George's Church said of the latest attacks. ``But this will not happen because we all live together like brothers in this country through sadness and happiness.''
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group believed to have ties to some insurgents.
``Islam doesn't support the ongoing terrorism,'' Sheik Abdul Sattar Abdul-Jabbar of the association said.
Three U.S. troops -- two soldiers and one Marine -- were killed Friday when a car bomb exploded near Qaim, an insurgent hotspot along the Syrian border, the U.S. command said. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed.
A fourth soldier, assigned to Task Force Olympia, died of injuries suffered Friday during a car bombing in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. command said Saturday.
U.S. commanders have warned of a possible increase in rebel attacks during Ramadan, when insurgent activity surged last year. Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer, is marked by greater religious fervor, and some extremists believe they win a special place in paradise if they die fighting non-Muslims during the holy month.
In hopes of preventing rebel attacks, U.S. troops have stepped up military operations in Sunni areas north and west of the capital. The operations included two days of air and ground attacks Thursday and Friday against the main rebel bastion Fallujah.
Fallujah talks broke down Thursday because of what the clerics said was the government's ``impossible condition'' -- handing over al-Zarqawi and other members of his movement, responsible for numerous car-bombings and the beheading of American and other foreign hostages. The clerics said al-Zarqawi was not in the city, a claim that U.S. and Iraqi authorities dispute.
Fallujah clerics said Saturday they were ready to resume peace talks with the government if the Americans suspended attacks and released the city's chief negotiator, Sheik Khaled al-Jumeili, who was arrested Friday.
The government had no response to the clerics' offer, and military operations continued. The U.S. command said in a statement that al-Zarqawi's followers were ``operating this illegal checkpoint'' to ``disrupt traffic, intimidate and harass local citizens, and interrogate and detain local civilians.''
``The checkpoint consisted of complex barriers and was considered key to the al-Zarqawi network's ability to control movement into and out of the city,'' the military said.
U.S. Marines also tightened their security cordon around Fallujah, establishing checkpoints to keep suspected terrorists from fleeing the area, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military extended the deadline from Friday to Sunday for Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to turn in their weapons for cash in the Baghdad district of Sadr City.
Once the handover is complete, the U.S. military will verify that no major weapons caches remain and Iraqi forces will assume responsibility for security in Sadr City. The Americans hope the deal will enable them to focus on the more dangerous Sunni Muslim insurgency.
--------
INSURGENTS
U.S. Intensifying Bombing Attacks on Falluja Sites
October 16, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/international/middleeast/16iraq.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 15 - American forces stepped up their pressure on the insurgent-controlled city of Falluja on Friday, unleashing an aerial and artillery bombardment of suspected guerrilla positions and encircling the city with hundreds of marines at checkpoints along its main roads.
Beginning Thursday, American jets began their most intense bombardment of the city yet, dropping 11 satellite- and laser-guided 500-pound bombs on suspected guerrilla safe houses and weapons depots, as 1,600 American marines moved forward under artillery fire to set up the checkpoints, designed to snare insurgents moving out of the city.
The air raids were aimed at the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant believed to be responsible for bloody attacks on Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. Mr. Zarqawi is believed to be using the city as a base.
American commanders said the raids were intended to pre-empt attacks that Mr. Zarqawi might have been planning for the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which coincided with the opening of a major rebel offensive last year.
As Ramadan opened Friday for Sunni Muslims, a suicide bomber drove 300 pounds of explosives toward an Iraqi police patrol in south Baghdad and missed, killing 10 bystanders instead.
The air raids and troop movements were accompanied by what appeared to be an intensifying campaign of American pressure and intimidation on Falluja. Low-flying F-16 fighters thundered through the sky all day, while Falluja residents reported that American loudspeakers had begun to broadcast warnings to the insurgents from just outside the city.
"The status quo in certain Iraqi cities is unacceptable," the marines said in a statement. "This operation puts the anti-Iraqi forces in Falluja on notice."
The stepped-up military operations sent a wave of panic through Falluja, which has been the target of almost nightly air raids for almost two months, and began to reverberate in Baghdad as well. The bombardment sent Iraqi families streaming out of Falluja, many of them fearing a long-awaited American offensive to retake the city.
In Baghdad, a group of clerics from Falluja threatened to call for a "holy war" against the American forces and the Iraqi government if they did not ease up on the bombing and drop their demand that the people of Falluja turn over Mr. Zarqawi, whom they insist is not there.
The clerics gathered at the Umm al-Qura mosque, the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents as many as 3,000 Sunni mosques in Iraq. The committee endorsed the statement, which called for a campaign of "civil disobedience" against the government.
"If the interim government and the occupation forces do not respond to the civil disobedience campaign, Muslim scholars and representatives of all Islamic and national groups will declare holy war all over Iraq and declare a mobilization against the occupation troops, as well as those collaborating with them," the clerics said.
The statement demonstrated the political risks of using military force against Falluja. In April, after the killing and mutilation of four American contractors, the ensuing attack by American forces reverberated across the country, with not just other Sunnis but Shiites as well proclaiming their support for their Muslim brethren in Falluja.
Ghazi al-Yawar, the Iraqi president and a Sunni Arab, warned recently about the consequences of a military assault on Falluja, which most Iraqi leaders and American commanders here expect will be very violent.
"We learn one thing in Iraq: that blood causes more blood," Mr. Yawar said in an interview last week, referring to an attack on Falluja. "It will send ripples as far as Mosul, which has the biggest Sunni Arab population, three million plus, which is living in a very tense situation right now. It is very dangerous."
American commanders seemed mindful of at least some of the political sensitivities involved in an assault on Falluja. One of the factors weighing heavily on Iraqi leaders and American commanders is whether they should risk an attack during Ramadan, which runs until mid-November. Religious feelings among Sunni and Shiite Muslims run high during that period, and the American commanders are wondering whether it would be wise to delay an assault until Ramadan is over.
Amid the confusion on Friday, family members and associates of Sheik Khalid al-Jumali, the chief of the delegation that has been negotiating the fate of Falluja with the Iraqi government, said he had been arrested by American forces. The Americans denied the charge. Mr. Jumali's detention would be a curious event, as American diplomats regard him as an honest, if somewhat powerless, broker between them and the insurgents who control the city.
American commanders denied that a final offensive to retake Falluja was under way, but they left little doubt that such an attack will eventually be needed. The city was lost to the insurgents in April and is now controlled by an assortment of Islamic extremists, who have beheaded and publicly flogged dissenters.
A delegation of tribal sheiks has been negotiating with the Iraqi government to stave off an attack, but neither Iraqi leaders nor American commanders have much faith that the tribal leaders have the power to disarm the likes of Mr. Zarqawi and the other insurgents.
The Americans, moreover, believe that while the insurgents are probably strong enough to ignore the population, they are divided among themselves. The senior American military officer said that there was evidence that the various groups were not under a unified command, and that they sometimes fought among one another, often over control of incoming fighters, sometimes over their various criminal enterprises.
Mr. Zarqawi's group appeared to be the most powerful, the senior American officer said, in large part because of his ability to pay his fighters and finance his operations. Some of that money comes from donations from Iraq and abroad, some of it from criminal activity.
In delivering the strikes on Thursday and Friday, American commanders said they had a good chance of crippling Mr. Zarqawi's network, which they say has been badly mauled in recent weeks, with as many as six of its senior leaders killed. Many of the targets struck Thursday and Friday were assigned to pilots before they took off, a break from the recent past when targets of opportunity were often passed immediately to pilots already over the combat zone. In this case, the number and type of targets hit indicated that military planners had been saving up a list of Zarqawi targets, in part to show surviving fighters the breadth of American intelligence.
"The Zarqawi network itself is under pressure, and a longstanding tenet of military operations is that when you have someone on the ropes, you aim to deliver a stunning blow," said Brig. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, director of operations for the Central Command. "That's what we've been after in the last day or so. The message is, we'll continue to increase that pressure, and it will be unrelenting."
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, the Iraqi government said Friday that it would give the Mahdi Army two more days to turn in its heavy weapons, after what some officials said was a disappointing performance so far. American officials said they had been disappointed by the limited number of heavy weapons turned in and by the few roadside bombs that had been unearthed from the streets of Sadr City. But they said they were encouraged by a last-minute spurt in the turnover of heavy weapons.
In an agreement struck this month with the Iraqi government, the leader of the Mahdi Army, Moktada al-Sadr, promised to turn over his heavy weapons, like rocket launchers and mortars, and dig up the homemade bombs.
Dexter Filkins and Iraqi employees of The New York Times reported from Baghdad for this article, and Eric Schmitt from Kuwait.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Military Forces End Gaza Attack After 17 Days
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34849-2004Oct15.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 15 -- Israeli military forces on Friday night ended an assault in the northern Gaza Strip that lasted 17 days and killed 114 Palestinians. Five Israelis and one Thai laborer were also killed.
Israeli military officials described the large-scale operation in two populous towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza as a success but conceded it had not stopped Palestinians from firing the crude Qassam rockets targeted by the Israeli forces.
"We dealt them a big blow," said Capt. Jacob Dallal, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces. "That does not mean we got the last Qassam, but their ability to fire consistently and accurately has been greatly impaired, so the mission has been effectively accomplished."
International aid and human rights organizations criticized Israel for the operation, in which 60-ton Merkava tanks, AH-64 Apache helicopters and unmanned aerial drones fired into the congested warrens of the Jabalya refugee camp and the nearby towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.
Images of the attacks broadcast by Arab satellite networks, often in tandem with footage of the continuing violence in Iraq, further stoked anti-Israeli and anti-American passions in the region.
Israeli military forces and Palestinian militants have increased attacks in recent months as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pushed a proposal to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip beginning next summer. Pro-settler political groups have accused Sharon of handing militants a victory by saying he would evacuate settlements in Gaza.
Israeli military officials said a limited number of forces and tanks would probably remain in northern Gaza on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the refugee camp. Friday's withdrawal occurred as Muslims began observing the holy month of Ramadan, a period of prayer and daytime fasting.
"When we are satisfied there are no more Qassam rockets and we can proceed with the disengagement plan without major conflagrations, we are going to pull back," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon. "But we are going to stay as long as there's fire."
About midnight on Sept. 27, the Israeli military began a major incursion into Gaza in an effort to curb Palestinians from firing Qassams, rockets fashioned from sewer and construction pipes, into Israel. The next night a Qassam landed in the town of Sderot, killing two children.
Among the 114 Palestinians killed in the attacks during the past 17 days, 29 were children and teenagers, and many of the adults were civilians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Dallal, the Israeli military spokesman, said Israel did not provide a breakdown of the number of Palestinian militants or civilians killed, but he described the intended targets.
"We had 15 incidents in which we targeted gunmen," Dallal said, "12 in which we targeted people laying explosive devices, and eight in which we targeted cells firing RPGs," or rocket-propelled grenades.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers flattened an estimated 95 houses, chewed up several miles of asphalt roads and agricultural tracks and destroyed more than 260 acres of olive and citrus groves and strawberry fields, according to a report compiled by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli military officials said houses and agricultural areas were bulldozed as part of an effort to destroy hiding places used by Palestinians to fire rockets into Israeli towns across the Gaza border.
Palestinian militants fired 14 Qassam rockets into Israel while armored forces were conducting their assaults, including one that landed near the town of Sderot just two days ago, Israeli military officials said.
Correspondent John Ward Anderson contributed to this report.
--------
Desolation and Vengeance Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
CounterPunch
By JULES RABIN
October 16 / 17, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/rabin10162004.html
What happened last week at the Israeli resort hotel in Taba was hideous: the random massacre of 30 or more vacationers.
Never, never can there be justification for the slaughter of non-combatant civilians.
The scale of the disaster at Taba, relative to Israel's population of 6 million population, was huge. Those thirty dead represent, proportionally, a loss of life almost half as large as America's benchmark 9/11.
Who attacked the Israeli hotel in Taba, and why, is presently a mystery. It is thought that the attack represented a retaliation by Al Qaeda against Israel's current "Operation Days of Penitence." "Operation Days of Penitence," never mind the sensitive poetry of its title, is a punitive military action directed against faceless Palestinians in the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp of Gaza It was provoked by the killing of two Israeli children, ages 2 and 4, who were the unspecified victims of a rocket fired by Hamas into the Israeli border town of Sederot.
The rocket attack on Sederot (a) which killed the 2 Israeli children occurred on September 29. Israel's retaliation (b) in the form of "Operation days of Penitence" began the following day and in the next days killed over 100 Palestinians. The bombing of Taba (c), which killed some thirty people, most of them Israelis, took place just a week after that. Given the character of the present Israeli government, it seems inevitable that it will insert a fresh contribution, some unimaginable (d), into the current cycle of retaliatory violence.
Sederot (a) was itself, of course, an inevitable next letter in the continuing series of alphabet books written in blood on whose composition Israel and Palestine have been collaborating for decades now.
"Operation Days of Penitience," Israel's answer to the 2 deaths at Siderot, had by October 8 brought death to 101 Palestinians, combatants and bystanders both. If we segregate 24 of that number, necessarily, because they were children, it will be seen that 12 times more children were killed in Gaza than were killed in Sederot. That is how a (b) follows on a given (a).
If the anguish of parents at the death of their children is universal as the acceptance of this principle is not and if the widely reported killings at Sederot was hideous, what can we say about the disregarded deaths of Palestinian children numbering 12 times more than the widely reported child deaths in Sederot? That some of them perhaps threw stones or taunted some of the 200 tanks and armored vehicles that broke into their slum, and they unfortunately deserved to die for that; and that the rest of them lived fated lives that brought them into a line of fire whose military justification overtook their chance of continuing their childhood?
Relative to Palestine's population of 3 million, 24 deaths of any sort would represent the equivalent of three-quarters of a 9/11. That -- worse by far this Palestinian experience of disaster numerically on the scale of 9/11 should have been composed entirely of children, is a fact that we can hardly look in the face.
Desolation and vengeance, vengeance and desolation: the two fat serpents of tragedy twine together in obscene kinship.
I saw a characteristic American dullness of mind and moral opacity displayed by John Edwards, John Kerry's political partner, on the night of his recent debate with Vice President Cheney.
When the subject of the Mideast conflict came up, Edwards fittingly expressed horror at the recent killing of the two children of Sederot.
But not a single word did he have to say about the blind clatter of the Israeli military machine that thereupon seized Jabalya and took the lives of twelve times more children than had perished in Siderot.
Did the 24 slain children of Jabalya figure so much less in Edward's mind than did the 2 slain children of Sederot because he was purely ignorant? Because he was an average muddled racist who couldn,t be bothered to fathom the agony of the distant Other? Or because he was a sheer opportunist serving the politics of the day?
Jules Rabin lives in Marshfield, Vermont. He can be reached at: jhrabin@sover.net
-------- un
Security Council elections buttress interests of U.S.
October 16, 2004
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041015-114354-4666r.htm
NEW YORK - The 15-nation U.N. Security Council will rotate a few degrees next year, with the five nations elected yesterday for two-year terms more sympathetic to Washington than the five nations that are completing their terms.
Japan, Denmark, Tanzania, Argentina and Greece each won coveted positions on the council, which is in charge of security-related issues such as troop deployments in troubled spots.
As of Jan. 1, they will replace outgoing members Pakistan, Angola, Germany, Chile and Spain.
"Are we happy to be rid of the Germans? You betcha," said one American diplomat who asked not to be named. "We didn't have nearly as much trouble with anyone else."
Germany teamed up with France, a permanent council member, beginning in late 2002 to lead U.N. opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Japan, on the other hand, has been one of the strongest backers of the United States in Iraq and elsewhere.
The General Assembly yesterday elected the incoming council members, each of which had the full and early endorsement of other nations in their respective regions.
"On balance, I think it will be a group slightly more friendly to U.S. interests, especially with Japan and Argentina," said Nancy Soderberg, vice president of the International Crisis Group think tank and a former U.S. envoy to the United Nations in the Clinton administration.
The council has 10 members elected to staggered terms, and five permanent members. The five permanent members are the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia.
Five other elected members, whose terms expire Dec. 31, 2005, are Algeria, Benin, Brazil, the Philippines and Romania.
The Security Council is responsible primarily for maintaining international peace and security, although its mandate has broadened in recent years to include protection of civilians, halting the spread of AIDS and fighting terrorism.
In the secret ballot, Argentina received 188 votes, Greece 187, Tanzania 186, Japan 184 and Denmark 181 out of a possible 191 votes in the General Assembly.
U.S. officials say they are delighted to have Japan aboard, because Tokyo has a history of voting with Washington, and because it pays such a large share of U.N. regular dues and peacekeeping expenses.
"We are welcoming the Japanese," a U.S. diplomat said. "Having the two most generous nations on the Security Council will be a welcome sight." The United States is the biggest financial contributor to the United Nations with Japan a close second.
Denmark, which will be joining the council, was a supporter of the Iraq war and one of the first to send troops to the coalition.
Miss Soderberg said that Tanzania would likely be a useful voice in negotiating peace accords in Africa, in part because President Benjamin Mkapa has taken a role in many of the peace efforts.
"You'll see strong leadership there," she said. "They'll take it very seriously. [Mr. Mkapa] is one of the continent's more promising leaders."
-------- us
Army probes unit's refusal of mission
October 16, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041016-122658-6306r.htm
The Army is investigating up to 19 members of a supply platoon in Iraq who refused to go on a convoy mission, the military said yesterday. Relatives of the soldiers said the troops considered the mission too dangerous, in part because their vehicles were in such poor shape.
Some of the troops' concerns were being addressed, military officials said. But a coalition spokesman in Baghdad noted that "a small number of the soldiers involved chose to express their concerns in an inappropriate manner, causing a temporary breakdown in discipline."
The reservists are from a fuel platoon that is part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in Rock Hill, S.C. The unit delivers food, water and fuel on trucks in combat zones.
A commanding general has ordered the unit to undergo a "safety-maintenance stand down," during which it will conduct no further missions as the unit's vehicles undergo safety inspections, the military said.
On Wednesday, 19 members of the platoon did not show up for a scheduled 7 a.m. meeting in Tallil, in southeastern Iraq, to prepare for the fuel convoy's departure a few hours later, the military statement said.
"An initial report indicated that some of the 19 soldiers (not all) refused to participate in the convoy as directed," the statement said.
The mission was ultimately carried out by other soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster Company, which has at least 120 soldiers, the military said.
Convoys in Iraq are frequently subject to ambushes and roadside bombings.
A whole unit refusing to go on a mission in a war zone would be a significant breach of military discipline. The military statement called the incident "isolated" and called the 343rd Quartermaster Company an experienced unit that performed honorable service in Iraq.
Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., who said her daughter, Amber McClenny, was in the platoon, received a phone message from her early Thursday morning saying they had been detained by U.S. military authorities.
Mrs. Hill said she was later contacted by Spc. Tammy Reese in Iraq, who was calling families of the detainees.
"She told me [Amber] was being held in a tent with armed guards," said Mrs. Hill, who spoke with her daughter yesterday afternoon after her release. Her daughter said they are facing punishment ranging from a reprimand to a charge of mutiny.
The incident was first reported yesterday by the Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss. Family members told the newspaper that several platoon members had been confined, but the military did not confirm that.
U.S. military officials said the commanding general of the 13th Corps Support Command., Brig. Gen. James E. Chambers, had appointed his deputy, Col. Darrell Roll, to investigate. An investigative team under Col. Roll is in Tallil, questioning soldiers about the incident, the military said.
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LOGISTICS
Inquiry Opens After Reservists Balk in Baghdad
October 16, 2004
By NEELA BANERJEE and ARIEL HART
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/international/middleeast/16platoon.html?pagewanted=all
The Army is investigating members of a Reserve unit in Iraq who refused to deliver a fuel shipment north of Baghdad under conditions they considered unsafe, the Pentagon and relatives of the soldiers said Friday. Several soldiers called it a "suicide mission," relatives said.
Some 18 members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in Rock Hill, S.C., were detained at gunpoint for nearly two days after disobeying orders to drive trucks that they said had not been serviced and were not being escorted by armed vehicles to Taji, about 15 miles north of Baghdad, relatives said after speaking to some of the soldiers.
Jackie Butler of Jackson, Miss., the wife of Staff Sgt. Michael Butler, 44, said she was awakened about 5:30 or 6 a.m. Thursday by a call from an officer from Iraq. He told her "that my husband was being detained for disobeying a direct order," Ms. Butler said, "and he went on to tell me that it was a bogus charge that they got against him and some of those soldiers over there, because what they was doing was sending them into a suicide mission, and they refused to go."
A senior Army officer said that 19 soldiers from the unit had been assembled Wednesday morning to deliver fuel but that some had refused to go. He denied they had been held under guard.
The officer said the soldiers raised "some valid concerns."
"Unfortunately it appears that a small number of the soldiers involved chose to express their concerns in an inappropriate manner," said the officer, who discussed the preliminary findings only on the condition of anonymity. Insubordination in wartime is a grave offense, and an inquiry is under way, the officer said, to determine if the Uniform Code of Military Justice was violated and whether disciplinary measures were warranted.
It is unclear if this is the first time a group of soldiers in Iraq has refused to carry out orders, and the military is playing down the incident as an isolated event. But the small rebellion suggests that problems linger with outfitting soldiers with adequate equipment in an increasingly dangerous country.
"I know soldiers are deeply concerned and have been deeply concerned about the equipment shortages," said Paul Rieckhoff, who was an Army lieutenant in Iraq for almost a year, until February this year, and is now executive director of Operation Truth, a New York advocacy group working to draw attention to the needs of soldiers in Iraq and returning veterans.
"When you don't have proper equipment, you feel vulnerable," Mr. Rieckhoff said. "We haven't evolved quickly enough to meet the enemy threat, which is rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs."
On average, American soldiers were attacked 87 times a day in August, the latest figures available, a sharp increase from a year earlier. In September, 41 soldiers died from rocket attacks and gunfire, up from 11 a year earlier.
The incident, which was first reported in The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., where several of the soldiers live, apparently began after the company tried to deliver a shipment of fuel to a base, but was turned away because the fuel was unusable, according to family members.
According to relatives and the Army officer, they returned to their base in Tallil, where they were told to deliver the fuel to Taji. The group refused, citing the poor condition of their vehicles and the lack of an armed escort, family members said. American convoys, which are usually accompanied by armored cars and sometimes by aircraft, are often attacked by insurgents.
"Yesterday we refused to go on a convoy to Taji," Specialist Amber McClenny, 21, said in a message she left on the answering machine of her mother, Teresa Hill, in Dothan, Ala. "We had broken-down trucks, nonarmored vehicles. We were carrying contaminated fuel."
After the soldiers were released, Specialist McClenny called her mother again and explained that the jet fuel the convoy had to carry had been contaminated with diesel, and that because it had been rejected by one base, it would likely be rejected by the Taji base.
Taji is in the volatile Sunni-dominated swath of Iraq, and Ms. Hill said her daughter felt "that if you go there, it's a 99 percent chance you will be ambushed or fired upon."
"They had not slept, the trucks had not been maintained, they were going without armed guards, it was just a bad deal," Ms. Hill said. "And that's when the whole unit said no." She said their defense is "cease action on an unsafe order."
Relatives said that prior to the incident, soldiers had complained to them that their equipment was shoddy and put them in greater danger. The relatives said they did not know if such complaints were made to the unit's command.
Patricia McCook of Jackson, Miss., said her husband, Sgt. Larry O. McCook, 41, had told her "that these vehicles were unsafe."
"He said, we go out on these missions, you know, he was afraid they were going to break down, that they were no good, they were just piecemealing something together, and set up for people to come ambushing you," she added.
The senior Army officer said the military was investigating the issue of vehicle maintenance.
Phillip Carter, a former Army captain and expert on legal and military affairs, said the kind of insubordination the unit showed had been more common during World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, when the draft was still in place and the average conscript's goal was survival. The formation of an all-volunteer Army was supposed to address these problems, Mr. Carter said.
But the continually shifting war in Iraq is testing the preparation of the military, especially the Reserve and the National Guard, military experts said. Since last year, Reserve and National Guard units have complained about lack of proper equipment and training. Those in rear service units, like cooks and truck drivers, often had minimal combat training. The Army has moved to change that, but experts like Mr. Carter call the effort inadequate.
"The paradigm shift that's happening is that a truck driver is just as likely to see combat as soldiers in infantry unit," he said. "There's better training now of support units now as they go out. They've gotten better about equipping support units, but those moves have still been incremental moves. There hasn't been a wholesale push to change the Army to face the kind of the threat it faces in Iraq today. There are no rear units in Iraq any more."
The Army officer who discussed the case said service records of the 343rd indicated that it has performed well for the nearly nine months it has served in Iraq.
Though the soldiers have been released from detention, they could face anything from reprimands to courts-martial.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and Norimitsu Onishi from Baghdad.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Bahamas Firm Screens Personal Data To Assess Risk
Operation Avoids U.S. Privacy Rules
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36853-2004Oct15?language=printer
It began as one of the Bush administration's most ambitious homeland security efforts, a passenger screening program designed to use commercial records, terrorist watch lists and computer software to assess millions of travelers and target those who might pose a threat.
The system has cost almost $100 million. But it has not been turned on because it sparked protests from lawmakers and civil liberties advocates, who said it intruded too deeply into the lives of ordinary Americans. The Bush administration put off testing until after the election.
Now the choreographer of that program, a former intelligence official named Ben H. Bell III, is taking his ideas to a private company offshore, where he and his colleagues plan to use some of the same concepts, technology and contractors to assess people for risk, outside the reach of U.S. regulators, according to documents and interviews.
Bell's new employer, the Bahamas-based Global Information Group Ltd., intends to amass large databases of international records and analyze them in the coming years for corporations, government agencies and other information services. One of the first customers is information giant LexisNexis Group, one of the main contractors on the government system that was known until recently as the second generation of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening Program, or CAPPS II. The program is now known as Secure Flight.
The company plans to do such things as assess foreign job candidates for risk, conduct background checks on cargo ship crews or take stock of people who want to open bank accounts in the United States, documents and interviews show. It also will provide something the company calls "terrorist risk identity assessment," a company document shows.
Bell and his business associates said they are trying to fill wide gaps in existing commercial databases that enable criminals and terrorists to roam the globe, sometimes under false identities. Company founder Donald Thibeau, a former LexisNexis executive, said he formed Global Information in the island nation to take advantage of regulations there that he thinks will make it easier to collect data than in the United States, which has a hodgepodge of information and privacy laws that he said would making doing business far more costly.
"You can realize the CAPPS dream in the commercial world," Thibeau said. "We live in a world where data can go anywhere and be warehoused anywhere."
Legal and privacy specialists said the company raises troubling new questions about the ability of computers -- in both the government and private sectors -- to collect and analyze personal information for homeland security. These critics said Global's initiative echoes the aims of the troubled government passenger-screening system, as well as another controversial program at the Defense Department that was shut down by Congress called Total Information Awareness.
An important difference from those programs, these critics said, is that Global operates in private hands, offshore and beyond the oversight that stymied the government programs. "As a business matter, there are layers of legal protections and public relations protections they can get by going offshore," Peter P. Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and privacy counselor in the Clinton administration. "It might meet business interests, but not necessarily the public interest."
Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said he worries that Global will become a contractor for government work that government officials could not get backing to do themselves. "He is making a highly controversial program more controversial," Lewis said about Bell. "Now he's doing it offshore and making money off of it."
The effort comes at a sensitive time in the debate about the use of personal information for screening and profiling, as law enforcement and intelligence authorities embrace commercial databases and other technology like never before to fight the war on terror. The Senate recently approved legislation that would wire together hundreds or thousands of local, state, federal and commercial data systems. But that "information-sharing environment" would be accompanied by complex rules to govern the proposed network's use and prevent abuses.
Company officials said they are not trying to evade scrutiny. They contend that Bahamian law also protects privacy but is not as cumbersome as U.S. regulations. They said the company's location will help them collect information from abroad because businesses and information brokers would be more likely to ship electronic records to the Bahamas than to the United States. Commercial information services in the United States have billions of records about Americans, but far fewer about people living abroad. Bell and Thibeau argue their services will eventually make the United States and other countries safer.
"The intent was not to run offshore and hide stuff," said Bell, Global's chief executive. He left the government at the end of March as director of the Office of National Risk Assessment, which ran the aviation screening program, and previously served as an intelligence official with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Global information is the brass ring."
Global was registered a