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NUCLEAR
Public at risk from 'woeful' MoD radiation blunders
Silent appeals for nuke safety
BNFL turns to French rival to save MOX plant
Iran Says It Won't Stop Enriching Uranium
Iran Rejects Any Deal to End Uranium Work
Moscow urges Tehran to sign NPT protocol, halt enrichment
Hitachi joins GE to develop U.S. nuclear reactor
Japanese official says North Korea holds nuclear weapons
MoD denies US missiles set for UK
Britain agrees to station 'Son of Star Wars' missiles
Billions spent on untested shield Missile Defense: America's Costly Gamble
Major missile study critical of Bush shield program
Plan to make baby buggies from nuclear waste
Proposed N-waste landfill gets a preliminary approval
MILITARY
Two GI's Killed in Afghanistan; Vote Tally Proceeds
British troops in Iraq won't be redeployed to Baghdad, Fallujah
In Iraq Chaos, Uphill Struggle to Bring Power
Iraq Commanders Warn That Delays in Civil Projects Undermine
Blasts rock 5 Christian churches in Iraq
U.S. Continues Major Attack on Fallujah
Violence, Crash in Iraq Kill 6 Troops
Mortar Hits Baghdad Stadium Just Before Prime Minister Visit
109 Palestinians dead at end of army campaign
Redeploying In Gaza Strip, Israel Finishes Its Pullback
Sharon Rejects Referendum Over Pullout
Killing children is no longer a big deal
Cyprus again protests entry of IAF jets into its airspace
Kerry could heal NATO's wounds but tensions to linger: analysts
Annan: Iraq War Hasn't Made World Safer
Troop Number in Iraq Too Low, Military Poll Says
Soldiers released in Iraq after refusing orders
US soldiers who refused Iraq fuel mission
More Papers on Bush's Guard Duty
'All of us refused to go'
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
CIA Chief's Power a Hurdle in Intelligence Reform
FEMA Election Day Faux Terror Event?
'Get Tough' Youth Programs Are Ineffective, Panel Says
Broad Use of Harsh Tactics Is Described at Cuba Base
Broad Use Cited of Harsh Tactics at Base in Cuba
POLITICS
Scary Ads Take Campaign to a Grim New Level
Candidate Decries Billboard Likening Opponent to Jesus
BBC under fire for 'false reality'
Bush Says He's Best Protection From Draft
What Geneva Conventions?
Rove Trims Sails but Steers for Victory
Father's former advisor blasts younger Bush
ACTIVISTS
Screening of Protesters Unconstitutional, Court Rules
"Justification for Direct Action against the War on Iraq"
Bigley brother hails anti-war march
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Public at risk from 'woeful' MoD radiation blunders
sundayherald
By Rob Edwards
17 October 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/45464
The Ministry of Defence is endangering public health by routinely breaking the laws meant to ensure the safety of radioactive materials, according to a damning internal report passed to the Sunday Herald.
The way the MoD handles thousands of radioactive devices on warships, aircraft and armoured vehicles has been condemned as "woefully inadequate" and an "embarrassment" by its own scientists. The armed forces have been unnecessarily exposed to radiation, and the general public put at risk by unlabelled radioactive waste, they say. If stolen, large radiation sources could also be easily made into devastating "dirty bombs" by terrorists.
The report was compiled by the MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), based at Porton Down, Salisbury, in Wiltshire. Entitled Skating On Thin Ice, it exposes the MoD's frequent failure to comply with radiation safety rules.
Radioactive devices are widely used by the army, navy and air force in alarms, valves, X-rays, lights, dials and detectors. One close-range gun known as Goalkeeper, for example, contains 24 radioactive valves, and the radioactive gas, tritium, illuminates indicators on Type 42 Destroyers.
There are strict statutory regulations governing the storage, handling, transport and use of these materials to protect workers and members of the public from exposure to radiation, which can cause cancer.
But the rules have been repeatedly flouted by the MoD. "There is a real risk that radioactive material will be disposed of incorrectly or reach the public domain, as it is not identified correctly," the report warns.
"The Dstl has numerous examples where these MoD radioactive items have been detected by scrap metal dealers or sold to the general public. These incidents have resulted in a considerable amount of embarrassment to MoD."
The report says that the legal requirement to take radiation protection advice has been "routinely ignored" by the MoD's Defence Procurement Agency . And it concludes: "MoD is currently at significant risk of regulatory action and will be for several years to come. MoD compliance with relevant radiation legislation is woefully inadequate."
The report was compiled by Andy French, a radiation protection adviser with Dstl. It was presented at an MoD meeting in Bristol on equipment safety assurance in October 2003.
Crews on Type 42 destroyers have been exposed to radiation from tritium light devices, which are "easily broken", he says.
French argues that the MoD's failure to comply with radiation legislation has been very costly. Because there was no clean-up procedure available, a contaminated £1 million helicopter weapon system was quarantined for five years.
The MoD accepted that it has problems with the handling of radioactivity, but stressed that it was working to overcome them. "We have recognised that improvements could be made to the management and control of equipment containing radioactive materials," said a ministry spokesman.
"We are working closely with the environment agencies to review our arrangements and put together a plan to implement improvements."
--------
Silent appeals for nuke safety
NJ.com
October 17, 2004
By Denise Jewelldjewell@sjnewsco.com
http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1098000954295520.xml
Anthony Rizzo Jr. was an unlikely choice to take on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A longtime security guard and union leader at the nuclear power complex in Lower Alloways Creek, Rizzo had always spoken his mind. But after a former plant manager admonished Rizzo for speaking publicly about security shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Rizzo took his fight to Washington.
"We had to find another way to get people to listen," said Rizzo, who testified in front of the regulatory commission about overtime standards and training. "I got lucky."
Two years later -- after a series of changes on the state and national level, as well as management reforms at his plant -- Rizzo said his guards now feel comfortable speaking their minds.
But critics contend more needs to be done to create an environment in which plant workers feel comfortable reporting their safety and security concerns at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear generating complex in Salem County.
A pending civil lawsuit against the plant -- filed by a former plant manager Kymn Harvin -- alleges she was fired after communicating safety issues to higher-level management.
"Her aim is to get the plants to run safely and to change the culture," said Norm Cohen, coordinator for Unplug Salem, a local advocacy group that supports shutting down the complex. "Right now people won't speak up because they're afraid of being fired."
Harvin did not return a request for comment Friday. However, Cohen circulated an e-mail Harvin sent to Chris Bakken, the complex's chief nuclear operator, last week after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it was sending a team of inspectors to the plant to determine why a low-pressure steam pipe ruptured Sunday.
The regulatory commission began the "special inspection" Thursday to determine what caused the incident, which had forced the plant's operator, PSEG Nuclear, to take one of three reactors at the complex off line.
"A notification was written in April 2004, 'foreshadowing' this very event -- but nothing happened," Harvin wrote. "How do you think that Control Room Operator feels?"
Cohen said Harvin contacted him by e-mail last week after receiving several phone calls from workers at Hope Creek saying they felt the company had minimized the seriousness of the pipe break and that they were increasingly concerned about the safety of the plant.
Skip Sindoni, a spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, said he did not have knowledge of Harvin's communication to Bakken, who was appointed in July, or of any notification in April, but said the plant had already begun its own assessment into Sunday's incident.
"That's to look at the big picture," Sindoni said. "How did this happen from an organizational standpoint all the way down to the mechanical end of it?"
The incident was first reported on the regulatory commission's Web site last week. Nuclear power plants, which are overseen by the commission, are required to report such problems daily. The commission then posts the information online.
However, Cohen contends the commission's Web site is short on detail and lacks adequate follow-up information about safety breaches.
"It's a very minimal amount of information that the public gets," Cohen said.
Those looking for a more technical explanation, Sindoni said, often call the plant directly. He contends the company is committed to reporting any problems that could affect the health and safety of nearby residents.
"In an open society, the more information that's out there is better," Cohen said. "The corporation's role is to make money. It's not going to release information that's detrimental."
A spokeswoman for the commission, Diane Screnci, said its investigators routinely talk to workers and watch reports to see if the plant is finding and addressing problems.
"We do inspections to ensure that people feel free to raise concerns and make sure they are addressed," Screnci said.
Sindoni said the plant has been working to re-enforce its safety culture since a series of assessments raised concern about the plant earlier this year. The assessments -- which were made public -- reported that some workers did not raise concerns because they did not feel confident the issues would be addressed.
PSEG has since implemented a series of changes -- including improving reporting procedures, plant housekeeping, and leadership effectiveness -- to address the safety culture, Sindoni said.
Cohen would like to see the effects of the changes publicized. He would also like to see local legislators step up to the cause.
"Remember, we're dealing with a nuclear plant that the worst-case scenario if there was a catastrophic accident could kill hundreds or thousands of people," Cohen said.
Rep. Robert Andrews said he has been following developments at the plant.
When a Washington-based advocacy group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, contacted Andrews with the concerns of several workers at the South Jersey plant, he notified the regulatory commission that he wanted to be advised of its investigations of the matter.
Andrews said he recently received a report and was told by the Union of Concerned Scientists that they felt it had been adequately investigated.
"My experience at Salem has been there is enough public disclosure. I don't think that's true with nuclear plants everywhere," Andrews said. "The NRC does not require enough public exposure by nuclear power plants."
-------- britain
BNFL turns to French rival to save MOX plant
Green lobby vindicated as nuclear fuel group admits reprocessing may be redundant, write Jason Nissé and Geoffrey Lean
THE INDEPENDENT
17 October 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=572872
BNFL has had to turn to its biggest competitor, the French group Cogema, for help to try to get its controversial £500m MOX plant operating properly.
The plant, which reprocesses spent nuclear fuel into mixed oxide pellets that can be used in reactors, is years behind target and has lost the company hundreds of millions of pounds.
In contrast, Cogema, which is part of the French nuclear utility Areva, has built two successful MOX plants: Caderache, which is now in the process of being decommissioned; and Melox, which is running at close to full capacity.
The failure of BNFL's MOX plant has led it to turn to Cogema first to reprocess fuel sent to BNFL by clients and now to help it get its plant working properly.
At the company's Stakeholder Dialogue - a meeting with customers, civil servants and interested parties, held last week - BNFL director David Bonser admitted that the group had asked outside consultants to help it with problems at the MOX plant. "It pains me to tell you this, but one of these is Cogema," he said.
The irony will not be lost on anti-nuclear protesters, who were frustrated by BNFL's failure to provide details of its financial justification for the MOX plant when it was being proposed and built in the 1990s.
Three years ago, consultancy Arthur D Little was asked by the Government to report on whether the MOX plant should be abandoned. BNFL was so concerned about secrecy that the consultants were forced to study documentation on BNFL's own premises.
BNFL said it did not want to release commercially sensitive information that might aid rivals. However, the only real rival in the MOX business is Cogema.
A BNFL spokesman confirmed Cogema had been working with it. "We have used them for discrete technical work and they are subject to confidentiality agreements," the spokesman said.
But BNFL and Cogema will still complete for MOX contracts. Cogema was chosen by the United States for the so-called "MOX for peace" programme, under which 140kg of weapons grade plutonium was controversially transported by sea and road to the Caderache plant for reprocessing. It arrived just over a week ago. The next round of contracts may come from Japan, which is set to step up its nuclear power programme.
BNFL has also revealed that it is has found a safe way to store spent fuel from Britain's ageing Magnox power stations, thus undermining the last rationale for reprocessing.
For decades the company has insisted that, once Magnox fuel had been placed in storage ponds and become wet, it had to be reprocessed because its cladding would corrode. It would therefore have been most unsafe to remove it and to store it on land. But last week the company admitted that it had found a way to store spent fuel on dry land.
In a report, BNFL said: "Full-scale durability trials of the resultant encapsulating package have been encouraging." The report added that it had also "examined the potential" of storing spent fuel instead of putting it in the ponds in the first place, and found no major obstacles to doing so. Environmentalists have been arguing for this since before the 1970s Windscale inquiry, but have always been rebuffed by BNFL
BNFL says it still prefers to reprocess the fuel, but that it is looking for an "alternative contingency option" if it has not managed to deal with all the used fuel from the Magnox reactors before the plant reprocessing it closes in 2012.
But nuclear critics claim that the reports should mark the final nail in the coffin of the controversial reprocessing package, since all the other arguments for it have crumbled.
The original rationale was that plutonium and uranium would become scarce as nuclear power expanded, and that reprocessing was needed so they could be extracted from spent fuel and made into new MOX fuel.
But the expansion of nuclear energy never happened, the price of uranium plummeted, and the world became awash with plutonium from reprocessing and the destruction of weapons stockpiles. And now BNFL cannot even get the MOX fabrication plant to work fully.
-------- iran
Iran Says It Won't Stop Enriching Uranium
October 17, 2004
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Saturday it would reject any proposal to stop uranium enrichment for nuclear fuel, the central part of a package Washington's European allies are proposing to avoid a showdown over Iran's nuclear program.
The European countries notified the United States on Friday that they intend to offer Iran a package of economic incentives next week in hopes of persuading the country to permanently give up uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to make nuclear weapons.
While the U.S. administration did not endorse the offer to Tehran, they also did not try to stop the Europeans, said a U.S. official, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity. The U.S. is pushing for U.N. sanctions against Iran.
"Iran will not accept any proposal which deprives it of the legitimate right to the cycle of (nuclear) fuel," state-run television quoted Hossein Mousavian, a top nuclear official, as saying.
However, Mousavian, Iran's chief delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said his government would study any proposal that would allay concerns over its nuclear program as long as it respected Iran's right to enrich uranium.
The key European powers agreed with the U.S. administration at a three-hour State Department meeting Friday that the package would be Iran's final chance to avert a showdown at the U.N. nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.S. official said.
Diplomats close to the talks said the European package of incentives included fuel for Iran's civilian programs and a trade arrangement with the European Union.
The U.S. government has lacked the necessary votes on the Security Council to impose sanctions because Britain, France and Germany were negotiating with Tehran in search of a compromise.
Last month, the IAEA's board of governors unanimously passed a resolution demanding Iran freeze all work on uranium enrichment, including uranium reprocessing and building centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The IAEA will meet Nov. 25 to judge Iran's compliance.
Iran has said the agency has no authority to ban it from enriching uranium, a right granted under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. But the country is under intense international pressure to suspend such activities as a good-faith gesture.
Defying the IAEA call, Mousavian told the AP earlier this month that Iran has converted a few tons of raw uranium into a hexafluoride gas, a stage prior to actual uranium enrichment.
Uranium hexafluoride gas is the material that, in the next stage, is fed into centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Uranium enriched to a low level is used to produce nuclear fuel to generate electricity, and enriched further can be used to manufacture atomic bombs.
--------
Iran Rejects Any Deal to End Uranium Work
October 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/international/middleeast/17iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Oct. 16 (Reuters) - Iran said Saturday that it would reject any proposal to halt uranium enrichment, a step European Union diplomats are proposing to end a dispute over whether Iran is seeking atomic weapons.
European Union diplomats have said they are seeking American 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, foreign policy chief on Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television. He said he was not responding to a specific offer.
Uranium enriched to a low level can be used to fuel nuclear power stations like one Iran is building at the southern port of Bushehr. If enriched further, it can be used in nuclear warheads. But Iran denies accusations from Washington that it has military nuclear ambitions.
--------
Moscow urges Tehran to sign NPT protocol, halt enrichment
MOSCOW (AFP)
Oct 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041017152132.txxyrw6q.html
Russia called on Iran on Sunday to ease world concerns about its nuclear ambitions by ratifying the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and halting all uranium enrichment, the Ria-Novosti news agency reported.
"The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) would like to seek more steps to strengthen trust in Iran's nuclear programme, and Iran must take such steps," Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov was quoted as saying in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.
Lavrov urged the Iranian parliament to ratify the additional protocol of the NPT, which Tehran signed in December 2003 and which steps up international controls on the nuclear activities of signatory states.
He also called on Tehran to immediately freeze all uranium enrichment activities, another key demand of the international community, Ria-Novosti reported.
The uranium enrichment process produces fuel for civilian reactors but is also used for production of the explosive core of atomic bombs.
Washington alleges Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies.
The IAEA has set a November 25 deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities and answer all questions about its nuclear ambitions. It risks being referred to the Security Council, something the United States has been pushing for.
Russia's foreign minister last Sunday said his country was opposed to seeing Iran referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme.
Lavrov also emphasised that Russia's help in building Iran's first nuclear power station in the southern city of Bushehr "was absolutely not a cause for concern at the IAEA" and vowed that Moscow would forge ahead with the project.
The United States has also opposed the project over concerns that spent fuel from the plant could be used by Iran to produce low-yield nuclear weapons.
Lavrov is accompanying President Vladimir Putin on a visit to Tajikistan for the opening of Russia's largest military base outside its border in a bid to boost Moscow's defense in former Soviet territories that have become overrun by Islamic insurgency and a growing drug trade.
-------- japan
Hitachi joins GE to develop U.S. nuclear reactor
(Reuters)
Oct 17, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=E1JMESGJ3NOCMCRBAE0CFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6522548
TOKYO, Oct 18 - Japan's Hitachi Ltd. (6501.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it would participate in General Electric Co.'s (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) project to develop and build an advanced nuclear reactor in the United States by 2010.
Hitachi, Japan's largest electronics conglomerate, said it seeks business opportunities in the United States and China through the project as it faces shrinking domestic orders, making it hard for the company to develop and maintain new technologies.
GE has completed a draft design of the reactor and will submit it to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval next year, after which the companies would be allowed to build a plant.
A Hitachi spokesman said it was still unknown what level of participation the company would have in the project.
"We are still waiting for the license," the spokesman said. "We are currently making preparations so we can start building a plant quickly when the license is provided."
The project aims to create one of the world's biggest advanced reactors, called the ESBWR, an upgraded BWR (boiling-water reactor), with the capability of producing 1.4 million kilowatts.
-------- korea
Japanese official says North Korea holds nuclear weapons: report
TOKYO (AFP)
Oct 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041017040045.d6knu7dn.html
North Korea has already completed the development of plutonium-based nuclear weapons with the help of Pakistan, a senior Japanese official said in comments published Sunday.
The remarks by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda represent the first time a Japanese official has confirmed North Korea's claim to have manufactured nuclear weapons, the Sankei Shimbun said.
"North Korea is near finalising development of nuclear weapons," Hosoda told a ruling party meeting in the western town of Shimane on Saturday, the Sankei said.
Pyongyang has not finished developing uranium-based nuclear weapons, but has completed the development of a plutonium bomb similar to the one dropped by the United States on Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Hosoda said.
"It is urgent to make (North Korea) abandon them," Hosoda said, without giving any evidence to back up his claims.
Hosoda said North Korea and Pakistan had cooperated in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. "It is disgraceful," he said.
Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan publicly confessed in February to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan has refused to allow he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's atomic watchdog, to interview Khan to discuss the international nuclear black market he used to run.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokemsan said last month the Stalinist state would never dismantle its nuclear weapons unless the United States drops its "hostile policy" towards the country.
Six-nation talks aimed at convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs have failed to make concrete progress so far.
-------- missile defense
MoD denies US missiles set for UK
BBC
17 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3750294.stm
The Ministry Of Defence has denied reports that American interceptor missiles are to be stationed on British soil.
The Independent on Sunday says Tony Blair has agreed a secret deal with the US to base missiles at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire.
The weapons would allow the US to destroy incoming missiles and form part of the new US missile defence system.
But a Ministry of Defence spokesman said no formal approach had been made.
Formal approach
A spokesman for the MoD said: "We are not to going to comment on this alleged secret deal.
"What we will say is that no formal approach has been made to the UK to base missiles here.
"Nor have we decided whether we need our own missile defence system here in the UK."
Work has already started on a £449m project to upgrade RAF Fylingdales to make it part of the US anti-missile defence programme.
But until now, the government has only confirmed it will allow the US to use early warning radar at the base.
Interceptor missile being installed in America Workmen install an interceptor missile in Alaska Missiles are currently being located by the US in Alaska and California, but it is thought the Pentagon wants to station more in Europe.
Under wraps
In August the Danish Government signed a deal to allow a radar base in Greenland to be used, but the US did not ask to site missiles.
According to the Independent on Sunday, the deal to permit missiles was brokered in Washington last May by senior official from the British Embassy and the US State Department.
It is reported the British agreed the deal in principle, but asked that it be kept under wraps until after the next election.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: "These reports, if true, are a source of grave concern given that a decision appears to have been taken behind closed doors before a full public debate on the costs and strategic implications.
"This could have major implications for the defence posture of the UK, our relationship with NATO countries and other allies."
The plans were also condemned by Labour left-winger Diane Abbott.
"It is another example of how we appear to be in the pocket of America," she told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme.
"We have no national interest in having American missiles on British soil."
-----
Britain agrees to station 'Son of Star Wars' missiles: report
LONDON (AFP)
Oct 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041016224926.wsksgq88.html
Prime Minister Tony Blair has secretly agreed to let the United States station interceptor missiles on British soil for the so-called "Son of Star Wars" defence system, according to a newspaper report Sunday.
Britain has agreed "in principle" to a US request to site the interceptor missiles at an existing early warning radar centre in Fylingdales, Yorkshire, northern England, the Independent on Sunday reported.
According to the paper, agreement was reached at a meeting last May in Washington attended by senior officials from the British embassy and the US State Department.
However the British diplomats asked that no official announcement be made until after Blair faces a general election likely in the middle of next year, the newspaper said, without citing its sources.
It is already known that the United States will use the early warning radar at Fylingdales for the new defence system, but nothing has been said publicly about missiles being stationed there.
Britain's Ministry of Defence said no decisions had been made.
"The UK has not yet decided whether we need our own missile defence. This is a decision for the future when the US system has further evolved," a spokesman said.
If Britain does accommodate the missiles, it could prompt difficulties for Blair within his ruling Labour Party, many lawmakers from which are already angry at the premier's backing for the US-led war in Iraq and might blanch at closer military ties with Washington.
The system, designed to detect and then destroy incoming missiles through interceptor missiles, has been devised by the administration of US President George W. Bush.
It is dubbed "Son of Star Wars" after former president Ronald Reagan's planned Strategic Defence Initiative anti-missile system, dubbed "Star Wars" at the time.
--------
Billions spent on untested shield Missile Defense: America's Costly Gamble
orlando sentinel
By Michael Cabbage
October 17, 2004
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/custom/space/orl-1gmdmain17101704oct17,0,99081,print.story?coll=orl-home-promo
FORT GREELY, ALASKA -- Six white domes that open like clamshells dot a rocky, fenced-off field here in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness.
Beneath them, 80-foot-deep silos hold missiles designed to destroy enemy warheads in midflight. They represent the first step of a $25.3 billion shield against long-range ballistic missiles and fulfillment of a 2002 pledge by President Bush to field such a defense by the end of 2004.
The deployment is the beginning of a long-term effort to create a layered system capable of destroying almost any type of missile in every phase of flight launched from virtually anywhere in the world.
It's a first step, however, that is fraught with controversy.
Although the White House is expected to declare the interceptor missiles ready for use before the end of the year, this type never has been flight-tested. In fact, the program has attempted to intercept a missile only eight times since testing began in 1997. Three tries have failed, including the most recent one Dec. 11, 2002.
Six days after that failure, Bush announced that he intended to deploy the system by 2004. No intercept tests have flown since, although two scheduled for earlier this year were postponed because of technical issues. An increasingly concerned Congress ordered Oct. 9 that "realistic" testing of the system be done within the next year.
The urgency to activate this limited system is driven by the possibility that a single "rogue nation" -- North Korea -- might develop a long-range missile that could strike the United States. But despite recent headlines, most experts think it could be years before North Korea has such a missile and a nuclear warhead sophisticated enough to ride atop it.
Even when fully deployed, the shield will likely never fulfill Ronald Reagan's dream of neutralizing the strategic arsenals of Russia and China. Both nations have the nuclear know-how and missile technology to overwhelm any planned U.S. defense with sheer numbers or fool it with sophisticated decoys.
Missile-defense proponents openly admit that the initial system, which technically is considered a "testbed," is far from perfect. But they argue the United States has nothing to lose by turning it on.
"When you don't have a defense, we should turn that question around and say, 'Why shouldn't we field that defense right now?' " said Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, which is developing the system. "We have a unique system, to some degree, in the sense that you have to build it to really test it."
Other past and present military officers vehemently disagree with the decision to start operating the system. One of them is the former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, the military organization charged with protecting the nation against a nuclear-missile strike and overseeing operation of the new shield.
"To deploy a weapons system that has not been adequately tested and then tell Americans they don't have to worry is unconscionable," retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger said. "We have the politicians of this country mandating deployment of a weapons system not based on military capabilities."
Current Strategic Command officials are so concerned about the effectiveness of the new system that they have decided not to rely on it if a missile attack appears imminent, sources told the Orlando Sentinel.
"The system will not affect recommendations given up the chain of command," said a government defense analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "That means in STRATCOM [the Strategic Command]'s eyes, it's useless."
A six-month review of missile-defense programs by the Sentinel found that:
# Engineering challenges have been underestimated. Although the basic technology exists for most of the systems being developed, the engineering required to shift them from the laboratory to reliable defenses on the battlefield will, in some cases, take years longer than optimistic assessments from the Missile Defense Agency and its contractors. For example, an effort to equip a jumbo jet with a missile-killing laser is years behind schedule despite a doubling of its budget to an estimated $5.1 billion.
# Testing programs are unrealistic. Testing has been scripted and, in some cases, too reliant on simulations and computer modeling instead of actual flight tests. The eight missile-intercept tests conducted so far have not come close to real-life conditions.
# There is little independent oversight. A 2002 decision to exempt missile-defense programs from traditional Pentagon oversight and requirements means that virtually no one without a stake in a project's success has any authority over it. As a result, systems with marginal capabilities are being rushed through development.
# The process is politicized. Politics and partisan ideology have thwarted efforts in recent years to make the programs more accountable and testing more meaningful. Modest attempts by missile-defense moderates in Congress to beef up testing finally won approval this month.
All totaled, about $75 billion has been spent during the past 40 years without yielding a single long-range missile defense that remains operational. The Bush administration wants to spend up to $100 billion by 2010 on a broad variety of missile defenses. They include the $25.3 billion system based in Alaska; new mobile defenses against short- and medium-range missiles; a fleet of ships with interceptors; the airborne laser; and possible weapons in space.
The bottom line, however, is that no one, including officials in the Bush administration, knows for sure what the final price tag for missile defense will be. Nor does anyone know whether the systems will work.
Technically feasible
A missile launched from North Korea would take about 20 minutes to travel more than 5,000 miles to the West Coast of the United States. The new defense is supposed to work like this:
An early-warning satellite 22,000 miles above Earth, or radar on a specially equipped U.S. Navy Aegis ship, detects the launch. Next, an upgraded early-warning radar at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California or the sophisticated Cobra Dane surveillance radar on Shemya Island in Alaska starts tracking the missile's course.
Another powerful radar -- a high-tech X-band version so sensitive it can detect the spin on a golf ball thousands of miles away -- locks on the target from a converted oil-drilling platform floating in the Pacific Ocean. Then, operators in a control room at Fort Greely or Schriever Air Force Base outside Colorado Springs, Colo., launch at least two interceptors from Alaska or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at each incoming missile.
The 54-foot interceptors consist of two main parts: a three-stage booster built by Orbital Sciences Corp. and a 55-inch "kill vehicle" that destroys the enemy warhead by slamming into it. As the interceptor closes to within 1,000 miles of the target, it deploys the kill vehicle, which maneuvers toward the warhead aided by data relayed from the X-band radar.
A heat-seeking infrared sensor aboard the kill vehicle finds the target amid debris and possible decoys. The two collide at more than 16,000 mph, vaporizing the warhead high above Earth's atmosphere. Elapsed time: about 15 minutes.
Nothing in that scenario is technically impossible. But transforming the infant system into an effective, reliable defense will take years -- and billions of additional dollars.
"There are not really difficult technical issues, to be quite honest," said Jim Evatt, general manager of missile-defense systems for prime contractor Boeing. "It's more of a demanding and complicated engineering task."
Missing pieces
There's no proof, however, that those engineering issues have been solved; the Missile Defense Agency has lowered interceptors into their silos at Fort Greely without doing basic testing.
The kill vehicle never has been launched on the Orbital Sciences booster in an effort to intercept a target. In fact, the kill vehicle never has been launched on that type of booster for any reason, despite engineers' concerns that vibrations from the rocket could affect the kill vehicle's sensitive components. All the previous intercept tests used a slower surrogate booster.
"One of the highest-risk areas has always been the additional vibrations when we moved from the test interceptor to the real one," said a senior Pentagon program analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They've had trouble getting successes with the cushy ride on the test interceptor, so it will be a miracle if this thing works."
Technical problems postponed the first of two key flight tests until at least late November. That could be after the system has gone on alert and, cynics point out, after the 2004 presidential election.
To make matters worse, the defense will be missing several key pieces when it's deployed. The critical X-band radar won't be ready until mid-2005 at the earliest. Existing radar doesn't have the same ability to help the kill vehicle find the target among decoys and debris.
New early-warning satellites, replacements for a system that has detected enemy launches for more than 30 years, won't be ready before 2007. The Space-Based Infrared System-High network of six orbiting satellites is billed as a crucial leap forward for missile defense. But there have been repeated delays as development costs skyrocketed from $1.8 billion to $4.4 billion.
A sister program to develop satellites that would track missiles throughout their flight has suffered similar schedule and budget woes.
"This whole strategy is based on the idea that if you get enough information from enough different places -- X-band radar and satellites and kill vehicles -- you will be able to find the real target," said Philip Coyle, director of the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation Office from 1994 to 2001. "If you don't have that information, you have a problem."
Streamlined oversight
There is considerable disagreement about how reliable the initial Alaska-based defense will be. Publicly and privately, the Missile Defense Agency has estimated the system would knock out enemy missiles 80 percent to 90 percent of the time.
However, a classified study earlier this year by Thomas Christie, Coyle's successor as the Pentagon's chief weapons tester, reached a very different conclusion. According to sources familiar with the assessment, it estimated the system's effectiveness at less than 30 percent. Much of the disparity involves which test data to include.
Some of Christie's Pentagon colleagues argue that even his estimate is far too generous.
"That assessment is optimistic because they have given the system the benefit of the doubt in areas where there is no information," said a Pentagon systems expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I personally think the real capability is much less than anyone is calculating, including Christie."
Attempts to accurately assess the system's progress are complicated by the fact that missile-defense programs are no longer subject to normal Pentagon scrutiny. After years of critical reviews by the weapons testers, the Bush administration eliminated traditional oversight for virtually all Missile Defense Agency projects in January 2002.
Instead, a support group made up of military officers and civilian officials approved by the head of the Missile Defense Agency -- many with a stake in the program -- monitors progress. The head of the agency reports directly to a Senior Executive Board at the Pentagon. That board is chaired by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and includes the secretaries of the armed services and the Pentagon's acquisition chief -- all White House political appointees.
"To succeed in missile defense, we have streamlined oversight," Wolfowitz told a congressional committee in June 2002. "The end result will be faster decision cycles while maintaining the highest standards of oversight."
However, in the two years since, the flight-testing program for the long-range defense based in Alaska has ground to a halt. Several programs, including the project to put a powerful laser on a jumbo jet, have shown little progress. And budgets have continued to spiral upward.
The growing concerns prompted Congress to include oversight provisions in the defense-authorization bill passed Oct. 9. The bill would require the Missile Defense Agency to provide more specific information on costs, schedule and performance goals for all of its programs. It also specifies that the new defense system in Alaska must be realistically tested by Oct. 1, 2005, according to criteria set by Christie's office. However, no penalty is specified if the agency fails to comply.
Even with the new test provisions, many moderate missile-defense supporters on the Democratic side argue that the system is being rushed into operation for political reasons.
"They're putting missiles in the ground and saying they are going to test as they deploy them," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. "That's backwards. You do the research and development; then you do the testing; then you do the deployment."
Better than nothing?
Despite the controversy, 10 more interceptors are expected to be lowered into silos at Fort Greely in 2005, plus another 10 at an unspecified future date, for a long-term total of 26. Four also will be installed in refurbished Minuteman missile silos at Vandenberg by early 2005, including two by the end of this year.
The Missile Defense Agency also is quietly talking to several countries in central Europe, including Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, about putting 10 interceptors in one of those nations to counter a potential threat from Iran. That adds up to 40 interceptors worldwide.
Proponents claim there is a simple reason for the rush to deploy the system: Without it, the United States is defenseless against a long-range missile attack.
"We have no defense now," said Baker Spring, a conservative policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "None. Zero. So the idea that you are worse off by building an operational capability into the testbed is, I think, difficult to argue."
Critics such as Coyle have a ready reply.
"The problem with saying something is better then nothing is that it misleads the person who hears that into thinking that the marginal capability that is there -- whatever it is -- would actually protect us," Coyle said. "Where is the evidence that shows this has any capability whatsoever?"
Michael Cabbage can be reachedat mcabbage@orlandosentinel.comor 321-639-0522.
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Major missile study critical of Bush shield program
Science Blog
October 17, 2004
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article4378.html
Security and Defense Intercepting missiles while their rockets are still burning would not be an effective approach for defending the U.S. against attacks by an important type of enemy missile. This conclusion comes from an independent study by the American Physical Society into the scientific and technical feasibility of boost-phase defense. President George Bush has expressed confidence in U.S. missile defense programs, which are currently planned to include boost-phase defenses as well as other defensive measures, and plans to spend $10 billion on the effort in 2005.
From American Physical Society :
MAJOR MISSILE DEFENSE STUDY PUBLISHED
Boost Phase missile defense strategy not feasible against many potential threats, according to American Physical Society study
Intercepting missiles while their rockets are still burning would not be an effective approach for defending the U.S. against attacks by an important type of enemy missile. This conclusion comes from an independent study by the American Physical Society (APS) into the scientific and technical feasibility of boost-phase defense, published in the latest issue of the APS Reviews of Modern Physics.
President Bush has expressed confidence in US missile defense programs, which are currently planned to include boost-phase defenses as well as other defensive measures, and plans to spend $10 billion on the effort in 2005. Senator Kerry supports the development of a missile defense system that works and is fully tested, but he has questioned the Bush Administration's extraordinarily strong focus on such a system at the expense of more vigorous attempts to halt the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
Boost-phase defense (disabling ballistic missiles while their rockets are still burning) has received much attention as one possible element of a National Missile Defense system. However, the report shows that issues of timing severely limit the feasibility of this approach. The short time window available for disabling an enemy missile means that interceptor rockets would have to be based close to enemy territory to have a chance of intercepting the missile in time, if it is possible at all.
The study found that defending the United States against solid-propellant ICBMs would be impractical in many cases, because of their short burn times. According to the U.S. intelligence community, countries of concern could deploy such ICBMs within 10 to 15 years, about the same time the study judged would be required for the United States to field a boost-phase defense against ICBMs. Even against the longer burning liquid-propellant ICBMs that North Korea or Iran might initially deploy, a boost-phase defense would have limited use due to the requirement that interceptors be based close to potential missile flight paths.
Only two to three minutes would be available to achieve a boost-phase intercept, even assuming substantial improvements in systems for detecting and tracking missiles, according to Study Group findings. Consequently, even fast interceptors could have difficulty catching liquid-propellant ICBMs and would be unable to catch solid-propellant ICBMs in time. In the most optimistic scenarios, the defense would have only seconds to decide whether to fire interceptors and could be required to make this decision before knowing whether a rocket launch were a space mission or a missile attack, the group finds.
However, boost-phase defense against short- or medium-range missiles launched from ships off U.S. coasts appears technically possible, provided ships carrying interceptors could stay within about 40 kilometers of the threatening ships.
''This report takes a detailed look at the technical issues involved in creating such a system,'' said APS President Helen Quinn. ''The study group includes scientists and engineers with experience and expertise in a range of missile-related areas. The study provides a reasoned basis for public discussion of the capabilities and limitations of this approach to missile defense. APS is proud to contribute this work for the information of policy makers and the general public.''
The APS Study Group looked at boost-phase defense systems utilizing land-, sea, or air-based interceptors, space-based interceptors, or the Airborne Laser.
The effectiveness of interceptor rockets would be limited by the short time window for intercept, which requires interceptors to be based within 400 to 1,000 kilometers of the possible boost-phase flight paths of attacking missiles. In some cases this is closer than political geography allows. Even interceptors that were very large and fast and that pushed the state of the art would in most cases be unable to intercept solid-propellant ICBMs before they released their warheads.
A system of space-based interceptors, also constrained by the short time window for intercept, would require a fleet of a thousand or more orbiting satellites just to intercept a single missile. Deploying such a fleet would require a five- to tenfold increase in the United States' annual space-launch capabilities.
The Airborne Laser currently in development has the potential to intercept liquid-propellant ICBMs, but its range would be limited and it would therefore be vulnerable to counterattack. The Airborne Laser would not be able to disable solid-propellant ICBMs at ranges useful for defending the United States.
''Few of the components exist for deploying an effective boost-phase defense against liquid-propellant ICBMs and some essential components would take at least 10 years to develop,'' said Study Group co-chair Daniel Kleppner. ''According to U.S. intelligence estimates, North Korea and Iran could develop or acquire solid-propellant ICBMs within the next 10 to 15 years. Consequently, a boost-phase defense effective only against liquid-propellant ICBMs would risk being obsolete when deployed.''
Although a successful intercept would prevent munitions from reaching their target, live nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads could strike populated areas short of the target in the United States or in other countries, shows the study. This ''shortfall problem'' is inherent in any boost-phase defense and difficult to avoid.
About the American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is the professional society for physicists in the United States, with more than 40,000 members. The principal functions of the APS are the publication of professional journals and arrangement of scientific meetings. On occasion, the APS produces reports on matters of public interest that require technical understanding, and for which an impartial and authoritative analysis would be of particular use to the public and to policy makers. The last such study was on the use of directed energy weapons for missile defense. This report is another study in that tradition.
-------- us nuc waste
Plan to make baby buggies from nuclear waste
Industry in bid to recycle contaminated material
sunday herald
17 October 2004
By Rob Edwards,and Peter John Meiklem
http://www.sundayherald.com/45454
Thousands of tonnes of radioactive scrap metal from nuclear plants could be melted down and recycled into cutlery, saucepans and baby buggies under a scheme being promoted by the nuclear industry and its regulators.
A report compiled for the government's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and leaked to the Sunday Herald concludes that "metal melting" is a good way to deal with nuclear waste because it would save money and be environmentally friendly.
The aim is to reduce the levels of radioactivity in metal from decommissioned nuclear facilities by mixing it with less contaminated scrap. Some of the metal could then be sold on to the open market and used to make household items.
As the leaked report points out, there is only one snag - the public might not like it. "There are significant stakeholder issues that must be considered in order to implement an integrated metallic waste management strategy," it says.
"These include public unease regarding the re-use of previously radioactive contaminated metals, and public concern over the transport of radioactive waste."
The report was written by researchers from NNC, a company in Knutsford, Cheshire, that provides services to the nuclear industry. Commissioned by the nuclear inspectorate, it was presented at an invitation-only seminar in Warrington earlier this month.
It points out that there are 70,000 tonnes of medium-level and 383,000 tonnes of low-level radioactive scrap in the UK. In Scotland, this comes from nuclear plants that are being decommissioned at Dounreay in Caithness, at Hunterston in North Ayrshire and at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway.
The establishment of melting plants for radioactive metal would be consistent with the government's aim of minimising waste, maximising recycling and being environmentally sustainable, the report says. It would also "reduce disposal costs".
"The idea is to prompt people to take a more wide-ranging approach to the issue," said NNC's Matt Buckley, the lead author of the report. "It is hoped that this can be considered as part of a strategy by the nuclear industry."
He stressed that recycling contaminated metal into household goods was only one option. Metal melting could also help reduce the volume and radioactivity of waste, making it easier to handle and dispose of.
Glyn Davies, a principal inspector with the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, argued at the seminar that "potentially beneficial options for management of metallic wastes are not being given adequate consideration".
"If our European friends see metal melting as a benefit and can make it work, then why not the UK?" he said. "Melting may contribute significantly to the management of metallic radioactive waste in the UK."
However Jane Hunt, an independent expert on public attitudes to nuclear waste, warned that the plan would cause a scare. "This is likely to cause a lot of public concern because people are very sensitive about radioactive contamination," she told the Sunday Herald.
"The idea that radioactivity could be in cooking imple-ments or children's buggies will frighten people."
Coincidentally, the nuclear-free group of local authorities also held a conference on the issue in Hull on Friday. The group's chairman, Dundee councillor George Regan, pointed out that some scientists thought that even the tiniest amounts of radioactivity could increase the risk of cancer.
"Do you think an ordinary housewife would buy radioactive pans, even if they told her they were safe? I doubt it. I wouldn't take the chance. The fact is that people do not want products recycled from radioactive material."
The nuclear industry has launched a consultation on a code of practice for recycling waste that contains so little radioactivity it is "exempt" from regulation. It would expose people to only a tiny amount of radiation above background levels, the industry says. David Owen, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Clearance and Exemption Working Group, said that legislation would allow companies to recycle nuclear waste. "It is not my place to tell them what they can and cannot do. It is very important to do the right thing. We will take good ideas from anywhere ."
The government's green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), said the aim was to keep radiation doses to members of the public "as low as is reasonably achievable ". Radioactivity should be disposed of by the "best practicable means".
"As long as safety is assured there is a role for the re-use and recycling of radioactive contaminated wastes, and this supports sustainable development," said a Sepa spokesman. But he accepted that there may be uses, like cooking utensils, drinks cans and children's playgrounds, for which recycled radioactive materials could be inappropriate. "One argument might suggest that we should develop controls on products that permit some limited rather than general re-use."
Environmental groups were less sanguine. "In a desperate attempt to cut costs, the nuclear industry has now devised one of the most potentially harmful examples of a 'dilute and disperse' policy", said Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
"The idea of contaminated materials entering people's homes is alarming. The notion that the nuclear industry has suddenly caught on to the idea of waste reduction is a nonsense. If it had, then it would stop calling for the building of more nuclear power plants."
www.nirex.co.uk
www.dti.gov.uk
www.sepa.org.uk/
www.nuclearpolicy.info
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Proposed N-waste landfill gets a preliminary approval
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Joe Baird
10/17/2004
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2429649
Cedar Mountain Environmental, the company headed by former Envirocare President Charles Judd, has received siting approval for a proposed radioactive waste landfill in Tooele County.
But it is just the first step of a multipronged process.
The state's Division of Radiation Control last week informed Judd that all siting criteria for the landfill, which would be located adjacent to Envirocare's radioactive waste dump, have been met.
"This is a huge step forward for our operations in western Utah," Judd said Wednesday in a statement.
"Cedar Mountain has not made a final decision on the types of waste that will be accepted at the proposed facility," he added. "However, Cedar Mountain understands that, as the other facilities that accept waste continue to fill up, there will be a greater need for waste disposal operations in the United States."
However, Jason Groenewold, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL), said Judd still faces many hurdles, noting that the company must gain a license from the division and the approval of Tooele County, the Legislature and the governor before any new waste disposal facility could be opened.
"Utah needs another nuclear waste dump like we need another hole in the head," Groenewold said. "This indicates that once again, Utah is being targeted as a dumping ground because of our history of nuclear waste facilities in the state."
Judd said he understands that more hurdles must be cleared, but intends "to aggressively pursue the required steps for proper approval."
The company, he noted, is currently preparing a license application for waste disposal that will be submitted to the Division of Radiation Control in the near future.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Two GI's Killed in Afghanistan; Vote Tally Proceeds
By Stephen Graham
Associated Press
Sunday, October 17, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38051-2004Oct16.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 17 -- A bomb killed two American soldiers and wounded three others Thursday in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Saturday, and an attack in an eastern province killed three children and a policeman on the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The attacks in the wake of a historic presidential election this month were a reminder of the insecurity that threatens Afghanistan's nascent democratic experiment three years after the fall of the Taliban.
Ballot counting from the vote gathered speed after a one-day break, and the interim president, Hamid Karzai, streaked ahead of his rivals in early returns. Karzai, the U.S.-backed favorite, had 71 percent of the vote with 4 percent of the ballots counted.
The U.S. military said a homemade bomb hit an American Humvee on patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan on Thursday, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, one of them critically.
Karzai condemned a separate assault Friday in eastern Konar province in which a truck was set on fire and then a remote-controlled bomb detonated, killing the three children and a policeman. He described it as a terrorist atrocity committed by "enemies of Islam."
On Saturday evening, four rockets also landed in the capital, Kabul. Three struck houses near the airport, injuring one woman, police and residents said.
While election 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.
About 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 within days who has won -- and whether the victor has secured the majority needed to avoid a runoff.
-------- britain
British troops in Iraq won't be redeployed to Baghdad, Fallujah: ministry
LONDON (AFP)
Oct 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041017144239.041hy1bn.html
British troops in Iraq will not be redeployed to Baghdad or the restive Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah after it was confirmed that the United States has requested London to move its soldiers to the US-controlled sector, a defence ministry spokesman said Sunday.
"If the troops do go they won't be going to Baghdad or Fallujah," a defence spokesman told AFP. The spokesman said that British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon would brief parliament Monday over Washington's request.
"He plans to make a statement to the House (of Commons) tomorrow. What he is going to be saying is 'we have been approached by the Americans to deploy British troops in their area of operations'.
"He will also be stressing that no decision has been made and that we continue to consider their request and will do so on its individual merits. He won't be naming units, he won't be giving you a start date or anything like that," the spokesman added.
Reports in Britain have said British troops based in the relatively calm south of Iraq could be redeployed under US command near strife-torn Baghdad.
British media have been reporting that Washington has asked for British troops to be sent from the southern city of Basra to relieve US forces in south Baghdad.
The American troops would be freed up to carry out a major offensive in insurgent-held Fallujah, the reports stated.
Britain's 8,500-strong force in Iraq is largely based in the relatively quiet, oil-rich south of Iraq, with their headquarters in Basra city and have had far less contact with insurgents than their US counterparts around Baghdad.
-------- iraq
In Iraq Chaos, Uphill Struggle to Bring Power
October 17, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/international/middleeast/17recon.html?hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 16 - Call it the Iraqi version of the tortoise and the hare.
On a six-day journey this week, more than 500 tons of house-size components on their way to the capital crept across Al Anbar Province, a grimy and murderous border region, at the white-knuckle pace of 10 to 15 miles an hour. Protected by an armada of helicopters, Bradley tanks, Humvees and bulletproof Land Cruisers, the convoy looked like the makings of some kind of space program, but in fact it carried sections of an enormous generator, financed by American taxpayers, to upgrade the Iraqi power grid. In operations like this, Iraq's physical reconstruction inches forward.
But lined up against the reconstruction effort is the danger that strikes with seemingly inescapable suddenness all over Iraq: in one recent example involving a similar convoy, two Jordanian drivers working for the company whose trucks move the generators were gunned down.
Pressure is increasing on the Bush administration to show that the rebuilding effort will win this race, and that some of the many projects that have been delayed or temporarily abandoned will soon improve the lives of Iraqis, giving them a reason to trust the government and reject the anarchy of the insurgency.
More than any other sector of the infrastructure, it is the electrical grid that fills officials with hope. True, virtually every project is behind schedule, and few goals have been met. Indeed, officials involved with reconstruction expend great effort revising the overly optimistic projections made by the American occupation authorities in previous months. But there are, finally, more megawatts on the grid than before the invasion, and with a number of big projects under way behind the scenes, officials say it is just the start.
"We're getting the crisis back under control," said Simon Stolp, the program manager for electricity at the Project and Contracting Office, which is managing billions of dollars of Congressionally mandated reconstruction money. "There are a whole basket of positive things to be seen," he said.
The grid had been deteriorating under the pressure of sanctions and neglect ever since it was put back together after American bombers destroyed it in 1991, but Mr. Stolp said those problems were quickly becoming a thing of the past.
"There will be more megawatts on the grid next summer than there have been at any period of time since the gulf war," Mr. Stolp said.
Iraqi electricity experts are less impressed. Saad Shakir Tawfiq, a scientist who leads Iraqi teams working at several power plants, said he was surprised that his relatively upscale Baghdad neighborhood was still subjected to regular blackouts, two hours off, and four hours on.
"It's the time of year when everybody switches off air-conditioners, and nobody uses heaters," Dr. Tawfiq said. "There should be a surplus."
But Mr. Stolp said that Iraqis, with their newfound freedom, were buying more and more electrical appliances and sapping the network, and even Dr. Tawfiq conceded that it could take a while for the big generation projects to get more electricity into the homes of Iraqis.
The 340-mile journey the generator convoy took from Jordan, which a reporter joined for the final 75 miles, showed how determined the Americans are to push ahead with big electricity projects.
The mission passed within a few miles of the insurgent strongholds of Ramadi and Falluja before the convoy of 42 vehicles reached Baghdad, snaking its way through the city's edgy streets in the dead of night. Workers climbed ladders to snip overhead power lines that were in the way, bulldozed obstacles on the ground and fixed a tank that had broken down in the convoy's path.
Gunshots rang out repeatedly, although most of them came from American soldiers firing into the air to keep traffic back.
"This is one of those you'll-never-get-it-done tasks," said John Yourston, a former member of the British special forces and now the operations director in Iraq for Olive Security, a private company that directed the journey, from scouting out the route to positioning the tanks traveling in the convoy.
The military's shorthand for the mission was MOAG, for Mother of All Generators. "It's a monster, isn't it?" Mr. Yourston said.
The MOAG, along with a giant gas turbine to power it and two other huge truckloads of equipment, arrived intact at a south Baghdad power plant at first light on Wednesday morning, two days before the start of Ramadan.
The generator is one of a pair manufactured by General Electric that are now set to be installed at the south Baghdad plant as part of a project to add more than 200 megawatts to the grid. That would more than double the current output of the ancient steam turbines at the plant and contribute substantially to the roughly 5,000 megawatts that the entire country is producing at the moment, said Abdul Hassan Qasim, the plant's director.
"What is produced by this turbine," Mr. Qasim said of the latest delivery, "is essential to Baghdad, because it is in the heart of Baghdad."
So the juice will go right to power-starved consumers without being dissipated in long transmission lines, he said. David DeVoss, a spokesman for the United States Agency for International Development, which is administering the financing, said the estimated cost for the project was $162 million. Bechtel, the international engineering and construction giant, manages the work for the agency.
Originally scheduled to be producing electricity by December, the generators are not expected to be ready until June. The pace slowed and security costs soared after the insurgency broke out across the country in April. Two months later, three General Electric employees were killed by a suicide bomber while riding in a convoy in Baghdad.
Now the work site, which employs some 260 Iraqis, resembles Fort Knox, as one Bechtel employee put it. (Fearing reprisals, the company asked that none of its employees be named, and that no photographs showing landmarks around the compound be taken.) The site is surrounded by high concrete blast walls, and there is a bunkerlike inner perimeter where project managers work.
Whenever a Westerner ventures from the inner perimeter and mingles with the Iraqi workers, he is accompanied by rifle-toting guards from ArmorGroup, another private security company. In addition, the site is protected by about 80 of the Nepalese guards known as Ghurkas. There are guard towers, checkpoints and sandbagged refuges for protection in case of a mortar attack.
Like the Western managers and engineers, all of the security personnel must be fed and housed at the site. "Security threw this project all out of whack," said a Bechtel official working inside the compound. "There's no telling what it's going to cost." He cautioned, however, that not all of the cost increases could be attributed to security. Officials involved with the reconstruction say they are in negotiations with General Electric over cost increases.
Mr. DeVoss said he had no information on how much of the contract would be eaten up by security, but other officials say the proportion has risen to 30 percent and higher on similar projects.
Still, it seems unlikely that an exact reckoning of security costs for the MOAG will ever be made. At various times the convoy was protected by the Army's First Cavalry Division; the Second Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment; and at least three other military units. Capt. Charley Von Bergen of the Marines guessed that 500 soldiers had been involved in one way or another, but he conceded that there was no solid estimate. Through it all, the MOAG kept rolling along, stenciled along its bottom edge with the word "fragile" and the universal sign for equipment that is easily damaged - a wineglass.
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WASHINGTON
Iraq Commanders Warn That Delays in Civil Projects Undermine Military Mission
October 17, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/international/middleeast/17contracts.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 - American military commanders in Iraq are warning civilian leaders in Washington that delays in reconstruction projects caused by red tape are putting the lives of their troops at risk and undermining the military mission in Iraq.
From the junior officer level up through the senior ranks, these officers have outlined obstacles that they say frustrate the rebuilding just as much as the roadside bombs and terrorist attacks that are the more visible threats. They have argued to the new American Embassy in Baghdad and to Congressional delegations visiting Iraq that certain regulations are a dangerous impediment to the military's mission.
"Bureaucracy kills," said one senior commander.
"We went to the embassy. We talked to two Congressional delegations. We are asking for assistance," said another senior American military officer in Iraq. "We can either put Iraqis back to work, or we can leave them to shoot R.P.G.'s at us," a reference to rocket-propelled grenades.
In interviews and e-mail exchanges that are full of similar comments, a range of officers all across Iraq expressed the view that success at delivering electricity, water, sewer services and health care is just as important as killing enemy fighters. And they revealed deep frustrations with procurement regulations involving such matters as bonds required of local contractors and workers' compensation costs.
The problem, they say, is the system of peacetime regulations governing routine federal contracts that is being applied in the chaos facing the reconstruction efforts. In detailed reports to the Baghdad embassy and the Pentagon, the officers described how projects were delayed and halted because of requirements to offer substantial workers' compensation coverage to local laborers, or rules that required start-up Iraqi construction companies to post large bonds.
"It is hard to believe that we can possibly get but a small fraction of the $1.23 billion of projects slated to begin before 31 Dec. started on time," said another military officer in Iraq.
Last week, the American ambassador in Baghdad, John D. Negroponte, sent a cable to Washington pleading for flexibility. He proposed 20 federal acquisition regulations that could be waived for projects in Iraq, according to four administration and military officials who read the internal report.
At the same time, the National Security Council has organized an interagency task force to conduct a wholesale review of contracting problems in Iraq.
"We are looking at all of the federal acquisition regulations," said a senior administration official involved in the project. "Don't you think some of these could be modified, waived or otherwise altered to allow us to work in this wartime environment?"
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has arranged for a few immediate remedies to be inserted into the defense authorization bill now before Congress. One would streamline contracting procedures for projects in Iraq costing up to $1 million, doubling the current ceiling of $500,000 for the speedier procedures. The second would allow commanders to make purchases of up to $25,000 without competitive bidding, up from the current limit of $15,000.
"Unfortunately, we have many more elaborate regulations for how we spend money than for how we fire tank ammunition," said one senior Defense Department official. "And if we didn't, people would be up in arms that we're not careful with taxpayer money. If it was a simple problem, it would have been resolved a long time ago."
The contract regulations were designed to prevent waste and fraud, and they are staunchly defended by members of Congress already upset with abuses of sole-source contracts in Iraq. Commanders say those concerns mean there is little appetite among American contractors to push for change: Potential bidders do not want to be lumped in with Halliburton, which holds a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for services in Iraq and is under investigation on suspicion of overcharges.
The federal acquisition regulations cover the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars authorized by Congress for reconstruction and security in Iraq. Rather than struggle to slice through the rules, American officers often tap small discretionary funds - mad money, in military slang - under the Commander's Emergency Response Program.
Those funds, $180 million for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004, are to grow to $500 million in the new fiscal year in an increase pushed publicly by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, who has met with senior officers in Iraq and supports expanding the availability of funds to be spent directly by commanders, in particular to train and equip Iraqi forces.
Representative Ellen O. Tauscher, a California Democrat who specializes in military affairs, spent a week touring Iraq last month and heard these contracting complaints raised by officers there. She said she was sympathetic to considering legislative actions to accelerate the reconstruction contracts, but also complained that the current debate did not ask why more was not done during the first year of the American occupation, when the Coalition Provisional Authority was in charge of rebuilding Iraq.
"Congress is always willing to look at amending, especially in emergency situations, the ability to contract and produce both real goods and services that need to be provided, certainly when in the context of protecting American fighting men and women and getting the Iraqi security forces stood up," she said. "But really, this debate is all a smokescreen. The real question is what did the C.P.A. do for an entire year?"
Administration officials said that at least some of the regulations criticized by commanders and the Baghdad embassy can be resolved directly by contracting officers in the field, and they are urging those contracting officers to be more aggressive in answering the commanders' complaints.
But commanders say that even car-bombings are not considered by federal acquisition regulations to be excuses for project delays. Many potential bidders are not willing to do business on those terms.
Among other obstacles to accelerating Iraqi reconstruction, as described by the military and the Baghdad embassy in reports back to Washington, is a requirement for securing $500,000 in workers' compensation insurance for projects in Iraq - even for jobs that employ Iraqis at just $5 a day.
Administration officials are considering proposals to cap workers' compensation claims by Iraqis at $10,000. To jump that hurdle, American commanders subcontract work to Iraqi companies because they operate under Iraqi workers' rules. The officers said that local rules do not yet exist or are unenforceable but theoretically would set limits on claims more in keeping with local salaries.
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Blasts rock 5 Christian churches in Iraq
October 17, 2004
By Larry Kaplow
COX NEWS SERVICE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041017-013458-5212r.htm
BAGHDAD - Predawn explosions yesterday ripped through five empty Christian churches in the Iraqi capital, which by nightfall also was the scene of the crashes of two U.S. helicopters, which killed two soldiers and wounded two others.
The church bombings occurred the day after the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Thousands of Christians have fled Iraq since the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The church bombings, while claiming no casualties, appeared calculated to intimidate the remaining believers, estimated to number about 800,000.
"It was horrible," said Odet Abdul, 48, who attends one of the bombed churches and lives around the block, adding that she thought she was about to die when she heard the blast. "They want us to leave Iraq; that is the message."
The U.S. military said the causes of the helicopter crashes were not known; several copters have been shot down since November. The military's main attack helicopters, Apaches and Kiowa Warriors, are two-seat aircraft and usually fly in pairs.
The United States said the crashes occurred in southwest Baghdad about 8:30 p.m.
Christians in the capital swept up debris at the five churches, which were attacked within an hour and a half of each other starting about 4:30 a.m.
The Catholic Church of St. George was left a shell, barely standing. Large portions of the 2-foot-thick brick walls had collapsed and a fire consumed the carpets, pews, icons and plaster inside the domed building. A 2-foot-deep hole was found in the foundation directly on the doorstep, possibly where the bomb was planted.
Terrorist bombers struck five other Iraqi churches in a similar coordinated attack Aug.1 - four in Baghdad and one in Mosul - during afternoon Mass, killing at least seven.
Christian-owned liquor stores and DVD stores have been attacked by fanatical Muslims who oppose the sale of such merchandise.
Nabil Jameel Suleiman, 40, a member of the St. George church, said he and his children were sleeping in an adjoining building when the blast occurred. They were not injured.
He said he planned to clean up the ashes and debris around the battered marble altar so the priest could celebrate Mass there today.
"Just to clarify that we will continue to do the Mass in the church and nothing will affect us," he said. "All Iraqis are threatened, when you go to work, go to school."
No group took responsibility for the attacks, which were condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group believed to have ties to some insurgents, the Associated Press reported.
"Islam doesn't support the ongoing terrorism," Sheik Abdul Sattar Abdul-Jabbar of the association told the AP.
The U.S. Marines' ground and air attacks on the insurgent-controlled city of Fallujah briefly eased yesterday. Leaders in Fallujah said they wanted to resume negotiations with the Iraqi government and the Marines. But as night fell, U.S. forces resumed an attack on a suspected militant target.
The heads of Fallujah tribes and other city leaders had halted negotiations last week after Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi demanded that they turn over Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, believed to be in Fallujah.
The Fallujah delegation said it cannot control or capture him any more easily than the Americans could do so. The Fallujah leadership, while supporting the local Iraqi resistance, has tried to distance itself publicly from Zarqawi.
Fallujah negotiator Khaled Fakhri al-Jumeili told reporters that "we are ready to return to the negotiating table" if U.S. air strikes are stopped, the AP reported. U.S. and Iraqi leaders vow to recapture Fallujah and other Iraqi cities before holding national parliamentary elections in January.
American officials had predicted an increase in attacks with the start of Ramadan on Friday. The interim Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition have withstood a wave of attacks for more than two months; at least 50 car bombings have occurred since early September.
During the past few days:
•Two blasts inside the green zone headquarters of the U.S. and Iraqi leadership Thursday killed at least five persons.
•A mortar strike near a Baghdad hospital early Thursday killed one Iraqi.
•A car-bomb attack at a police station in southern Baghdad killed 10 Friday.
•A car bombing Friday killed three U.S. troops and an Iraqi translator in Qaim, a town near the Syrian border primarily patrolled by Marines.
•The U.S. Army announced that another car bomb, near the northern city of Mosul, killed a soldier.
•The U.S. military yesterday announced the deaths of four other soldiers in two car bombings Friday.
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U.S. Continues Major Attack on Fallujah
October 17, 2004
By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces battled insurgents around the rebel stronghold of Fallujah on Sunday, and militants ambushed and killed nine Iraqi policemen returning from training in Jordan. Many Iraqi Christians skipped Mass following bombings at churches in the capital.
Fierce clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents broke out on a highway east of Fallujah and in the southern part of the city, witnesses said. The road, which leads to Baghdad, has been completely blocked. Residents reported fresh aerial and artillery attacks as explosions boomed across the city.
Plumes of smoke were seen rising from the Askari and Shuhada neighborhoods in eastern and southern Fallujah as families began to flee the area, residents reported. They said a Humvee was seen burning in the eastern edge of the city. Hospital officials said three civilians were injured in the clashes.
By sundown, U.S. troops had pulled back, setting up a checkpoint southwest of the city, witnesses said.
The fighting came after a deadly two days for U.S. forces. Two Americans were killed Saturday when a pair of helicopters crashed south of Baghdad, and four U.S. troops died in car bomb blasts in northern Iraq and near the Syrian border on Friday.
Fallujah, 40 miles west of the capital, is considered the toughest stronghold of insurgents. Commanders have been speaking of a possible new offensive to wrest it out and other cities of militants' control, and the Marines said Saturday they had tightened their cordon around the city to keep suspected terrorists from fleeing the area. Still, officials have said that intensified airstrikes and fighting over the past week don't mark the start of a new operation.
Along the Syrian border, clashes Saturday between U.S. troops and insurgents left four people dead and 13 others wounded, according to Dr. Wael al-Duleimi from the hospital in the border town of Qaim on Sunday. The city, a hotbed of insurgent activity, was scene to one of the deadly car bombs on Friday.
Meanwhile, police said Sunday that nine Iraqi policemen returning from training in Jordan were ambushed and killed on their way home to Karbala. The bus they were traveling in was attacked Saturday in Latifiyah, a town of frequent insurgent attacks 25 miles south of Baghdad, said Karbala police spokesman Abdul-Rahman Mishawi. The attackers escaped.
Insurgents have repeatedly attacked Iraqi security forces in an attempt to destabilize and hamper reconstruction. Hundreds of police have been killed by mortars, roadside bombs, and car bombers in recent months.
Negotiations aimed at restoring government control in Fallujah without requiring a ground assault have faltered.
Fallujah clerics on Sunday repeated their offer to return to the negotiating table if the U.S. stopped its bombing, while blaming the Iraqi government for the violence. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had threatened military action if Fallujah didn't turn over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"We are still ready to go back to the talks and open new channels of dialogue," said negotiator Abdul Hamid Jadou. But he said Allawi is "responsible for each drop of blood being spilled in Fallujah. This government sided with the Americans in bombing the innocent people who are fasting (on) Ramadan."
Iraq's interim government responded by renewing its call to Fallujah to hand over "terrorists" or face attack.
"The ongoing threat of terrorists to our people and the use of some areas and cities as a haven for them is something the government cannot accept or tolerate," national security adviser Qassem Dawoud said in a statement Sunday.
South of Baghdad, two Army OH-58 helicopters went down about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, the 1st Cavalry Division said. The division said the cause of the crashes had not been determined.
Investigators at the site will "go through it until they ascertain the cause of the crash. It could be days," said spokesman Lt. Col. James Hutton on Sunday.
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.
Sunday's fighting around Fallujah followed an overnight strike by U.S. jets, blasting what the American command said was a checkpoint operated by the feared Tawhid and Jihad terror movement of Jordanian-born extremist al-Zarqawi. Three people were killed, according to the Fallujah hospital.
On Saturday, hospital officials said U.S. artillery shells hit a house in Halabsa village, 10 miles southwest of the city, killing a 3-year-old girl and injuring four family members.
In Jordan, meanwhile, a military prosecutor charged al-Zarqawi and 12 other militants for an alleged al-Qaida linked plot to attack the U.S. Embassy in Amman and Jordanian government targets with chemical and conventional weapons, government officials said Sunday.
Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, and three others in the group are at large and will be tried in absentia, officials said.
Predawn bombings Saturday at five churches in four separate Baghdad neighborhoods caused no casualties but have alarmed the Christian minority community, which saw coordinated attacks in August against five Iraqi churches - four in Baghdad and one in Mosul - that killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens more.
That had been the first significant strike against Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians since the U.S. invasion began last year.
U.S. commanders had warned of a possible increase in rebel attacks during Ramadan, when insurgent activity surged last year. In hopes of preventing rebel attacks, U.S. troops had stepped up operations in Sunni areas north and west of the capital. It included two days of air and ground attacks Thursday and Friday against the main rebel bastion Fallujah.
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Violence, Crash in Iraq Kill 6 Troops
5 Baghdad Churches Targeted by Bombers
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38640-2004Oct16.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 16 -- Two U.S. military transport helicopters crashed Saturday night in southwestern Baghdad, the military said, killing two soldiers and bringing to six the number of American servicemen reported killed in violence across Iraq over the past two days.
Also in the capital, a series of bombings before dawn damaged five churches, and a mortar round or rocket struck a hospital, killing one Iraqi and wounding five.
Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes dropped bombs on the western part of the city of Fallujah, the center of a Sunni Muslim insurgency, and tanks fired artillery rounds from its perimeter, the Reuters news agency reported. The U.S. military did not report any civilian casualties, but residents said an infant was killed.
The U.S. helicopters crashed around 8:30 p.m., according to a statement released by the military, which said the cause was under investigation. Two wounded soldiers were evacuated and taken to a medical facility.
In one attack on U.S. troops, a suicide car bombing killed two soldiers, one Marine and an Iraqi translator Friday in Qaim, a city on the Syrian border in the province of Anbar that has become a center for Sunni insurgents. Another car bomb killed a U.S. soldier Friday in the northern city of Mosul, 220 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Saturday.
U.S. forces bombed Fallujah for 12 consecutive hours after two bombs exploded almost simultaneously inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone on Thursday, killing three American civilians and as many as six Iraqis. Fallujah had been quieter for much of Saturday, before bombing resumed late in the day.
Troops formed a "dynamic cordon" around Fallujah to block "fleeing" insurgents, the military announced in a statement. The city has been bracing for a widely anticipated offensive by U.S. forces, who vacated Fallujah after a truce in April.
U.S. officials say that Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al Qaeda, uses the city as a base of operations. They denied a report by the official Kuwaiti news agency on Saturday that Zarqawi, who has asserted responsibility for numerous deadly attacks across Iraq, including the Green Zone bombing, had been captured during a raid.
Last week, insurgents and U.S. forces appeared to be drawing closer to a confrontation in Fallujah. On Wednesday, the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned Fallujah residents to hand over Zarqawi or face having the city taken by force. The insurgents responded Thursday with the Green Zone bombings, the first such attacks to penetrate the heavily protected compound. Negotiations for a cease-fire agreement remained stalled Friday as U.S. forces pounded the city with airstrikes and artillery.
U.S. officials have said intelligence indicates that insurgents intend to use the holy month of Ramadan, which began Friday, as a pretext for increasing attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces throughout the country.
In Qaim on Saturday, one day after the attack on the Americans, mortar fire killed four Iraqis and wounded 30, a physician in the city told Reuters. Qaim is located near a highway that runs along the Euphrates River and connects to other Sunni hot spots such as Hit and Ramadi.
Homemade bombs exploded in quick succession early Saturday at the five churches in four Baghdad neighborhoods, the Associated Press reported. A series of similar bombings in August killed at least 11 people and injured dozens.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry said the first bomb exploded at St. Joseph Church at about 4 a.m. Over the next 90 minutes, bombs damaged St. Jacob's Church, St. George's Church, the Church of Rome and St. Thomas Church, the ministry said.
The Church of Rome, a Catholic church in the capital's Karrada district, was gutted, Reuters reported. Each church sustained exterior damage, according to news agencies.
"It is a criminal act to make Iraq unstable and to create religious difficulties," the Rev. Zaya Yousef of St. George's Church said, the AP reported. "But this will not happen because we all live together like brothers in this country through sadness and happiness."
Later in the day, a rocket or a mortar round struck the compound of the Ibn al-Bitar hospital in Baghdad. The attack killed one person and wounded five. A rocket also hit the parking lot of the Al-Mansour Hotel, where diplomats and journalists reside. No injuries were reported.
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Mortar Hits Baghdad Stadium Just Before Prime Minister Visit
October 17, 2004
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/international/middleeast/17CND-IRAQ.html?ei=5094&en=845f997ef93ca703&hp=&ex=1098072000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 17 - A mortar round hit a stadium in a Baghdad slum where Iraqis were handing over their weapons today, shortly before a visit to the site by Iraq's prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
The weapons-for-cash exchange is intended to disarm the militiamen loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr who patrol the Sadr City neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.
"I am very thrilled and pleased that things are moving in the right direction and arms are being surrendered to the Iraqi government," said Mr. Allawi.
"I call upon all Iraqi people throughout Iraq, whether in Basra, Nasiriyah, Falluja, Ramadi or Mosul, to surrender their weapons and to respect the rule of law and to be part of the political process," he told reporters.
The mortar attack killed two members of the Iraqi National Guard and a civilian and wounded nine others, according to a report from the Reuters news agency.
The American military said in a statement today that the weapons turn-in initiative was beginning to show a "glimmer of success" as more medium and heavy weapons were beginning to come in.
"This development has led to a Saturday start of a two-day extension of the program by the Iraqi government to allow for more such weapons and the dismantling of improvised explosive devices," it said.
The military also said today that its forces conducted strikes late overnight on what it called a "terrorist checkpoint" in Falluja. Four civilians, including a child, were killed in the violence, Reuters reported.
Scattered violence erupted across Iraq on the first weekend of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, as six United States servicemen were killed in car bombings and helicopter crashes.
Five Christian churches in Baghdad were firebombed early on Saturday morning in what appeared to be coordinated attacks, the latest effort by insurgents to terrorize the relatively small population of Christians in Iraq.
Two military helicopters crashed at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday in southwest Baghdad, killing two soldiers and injuring two others, the military reported. American officials declined to say whether the crash appeared to be caused by an accident or an act of aggression. More than two dozen military helicopters have been downed in Iraq since the end of major combat was declared 17 months ago.
The crash followed two deadly car bombings in northern and western Iraq that killed four servicemen on Friday. One attack, in Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, killed a soldier after an improvised bomb packed into a vehicle exploded near a military convoy at 1:20 p.m.
On Friday night, a suicide bomber driving an explosive-laden vehicle killed a marine, two soldiers, and their civilian translator near the restive town of Qaim in western Iraq near the Syrian border, said Maj. Kris Meyle of the Air Force, a military spokeswoman in Baghdad. Another soldier was also wounded, she said.
In addition, the news agency Agence France-Presse reported on Saturday night that a statement attributed to a terror group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant believed to be responsible for attacks on Iraqi civilians and American soldiers, claimed the group had beheaded 11 Iraqi police and national guardsmen. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, however, and there was no confirmation of the report.
The new Iraqi security forces continue to be vulnerable targets for insurgents. On Friday, a suicide bomber in southern Baghdad driving a vehicle loaded with 300 pounds of explosives tried to attack a patrol of Iraqi police but missed, killing 10 bystanders instead.
American officials had been bracing for widespread violence during the monthlong Ramadan holiday, which began Friday. On the first day of Ramadan last year, insurgents killed at least 34 people in Baghdad in coordinated assaults that included bombing the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and four police stations.
No one was killed or injured in the church bombings on Saturday, Iraqi officials said. But the damage was heavy in some places, including a Catholic church in the prosperous neighborhood of Karada, where fires after the explosion burned the length of the sanctuary and blew out large sections of roof and wall. The spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, said the five churches were all attacked with improvised explosive devices between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.
The attacks continue a campaign of terror against Iraq's 800,000 Christians, an effort that took its most violent turn on Aug. 1 when car bombers attacked five churches in Baghdad and Mosul during Sunday evening Mass, killing at least 12 people.
Of the five churches struck on Saturday, two were in Dora, in southern Baghdad; the others were in Mansur, the upscale neighborhood just west of central Baghdad; Karada, in southeastern Baghdad; and near the Shurta tunnel in western Baghdad. At the still-smoldering St. George's Church in Karada, the caretaker, Nabil Jamil, said an American military official had come by at about 5 p.m. on Friday and warned that there had been threats against Christian churches.
Thousands of Christians have already emigrated to Syria and other nations, and many who remain fear rising efforts to pressure them to leave. "Iraqi Christians are suffering a lot now," said Audet Abdal, 48, who lives behind St. George's Church, which she has attended since her youth. "We can't wear crosses or show signs of Christianity."
Mr. Jamil said the 4 a.m. blast tore through concrete to form a semicircular impact crater four feet wide at the entrance to the 58-year-old church and ignited a raging fire that burned almost an hour. The sanctuary was demolished, its walls and ceiling blackened with soot and charred embers strewn about the floor.
Mr. Jamil said he had no idea whether the church could be rebuilt. "It will be very difficult," he said. "We don't have money."
Christine Hauser contributed reporting for this article from New York.
-------- israel / palestine
109 Palestinians dead at end of army campaign
October 17, 2004
By Ibrahim Barzak
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041017-123426-8659r.htm
JEBALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip - Palestinians retrieved belongings from the rubble of homes and work crews patched up roads and water pipes yesterday in the aftermath of Israel's deadliest offensive in the Gaza Strip in four years of fighting.
The 17-day mission ended Friday evening, when Israel withdrew tanks and ground forces from populated areas in northern Gaza. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the pullback at the urging of Israeli military commanders, who argued the offensive had played itself out, and after calls from the United States to wrap up the operation.
At least 109 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded during the campaign, launched in response to a deadly rocket attack on the southern Israeli border town of Sderot. The dead included dozens of civilians, among them 18 minors.
Five Israelis, including two preschoolers killed in the Sderot attack, also died.
The Israeli operation focused on the Jebaliya refugee camp and the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, the main launching grounds for hundreds of homemade Qassam rockets in the past four years.
Tanks and bulldozers razed dozens of homes, uprooted crops and tore up roads and water pipes. The Palestinians say much of the destruction was wanton. The army said soldiers destroyed only homes from which militants attacked them.
In Jebaliya, at least 45 homes and a partially built mosque were razed in the eastern area of the camp. On the ground floor of the mosque, which had been in use for the past five months, sand covered carpets and holy books.
Residents searched the rubble for belongings yesterday.
Latife Abu Oudeh, 55, was sitting on the rubble as her daughter-in-law carried mattresses, children's clothing, a pink teddy bear, silverware and a bag with cosmetics and perfume from the ruins of their house.
Mrs. Abu Oudeh said her four-room house, home to 16 persons, was destroyed at the beginning of the offensive. She said the family received no warning and was sleeping when a bulldozer approached before dawn. "My daughter was in the bathroom when she found the wall collapsing," Mrs. Abu Oudeh said.
The family fled in a panic, she said. "When we reached the next building, I looked back and saw my house completely demolished."
Many Palestinians in northern Gaza have said that they don't want the militants to fire more rockets at Israeli border towns, because such attacks provoke devastating Israeli reprisals.
However, Mrs. Abu Oudeh said her heart was now set on revenge. "I am happy rockets were fired, and I want more to be fired," she said bitterly, adding that she was pleased Sderot residents were panicking over the rocket attacks.
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Redeploying In Gaza Strip, Israel Finishes Its Pullback
October 17, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/international/middleeast/17mideast.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 16 - Israeli troops and armor completed their pullback from built-up areas in the Gaza Strip early on Saturday, but many soldiers have remained in the territory, redeployed on the hills overlooking the Jabaliya and Beit Hanun refugee settlements.
The redeployment was the effective end to Israel's 17-day offensive to repress the firing of Qassam rockets into Israeli settlements and towns from the northern Gaza strip. Some 115 Palestinians died during the operation, Israeli Radio said Saturday morning. Western news agencies say at least a third of the dead have been civilians caught in the crossfire, including two schoolgirls killed by stray fire as they sat at their desks.
Israeli officials emphasized that forces would remain on high alert and would be prepared to retake positions on the edges of Jabaliya and other refugee areas if rocket attacks resumed in earnest. The troops are redeployed about a half-mile into Gaza, in the area from which many of the rockets have been fired by Palestinian militants, most of them affiliated with Hamas.
"We will move in and act whenever we feel there is a threat," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The pullback produced celebrations throughout the northern Gaza Strip, especially in Jabaliya, which exploded with firecrackers. A Hamas spokesman, Fathi Hammad, said: "The Zionist army has retreated in defeat from all the positions. We consider it a victory for our resistance."
But the Israeli operation also left behind further destruction to the shaky economy of Gaza. Troops uprooted many olive and citrus groves - having already uprooted many earlier this summer in Beit Hanun - from where the militants can hide to fire the Qassams, an operation that can take less than 10 minutes.
Electricity was out in Beit Hanun, Palestinians said, houses were destroyed in Jabaliya and roads and water pipes had been ripped up by tanks. "The whole house is rubble and there is no way we can find anything," Ezzeya Daher, 50, told Reuters news agency in Jabaliya, as hundreds of people picked through mounds of debris to search for belongings. "Now we are refugees for a second time."
Senior army leaders have argued for a week now that the goal of completely ending the rocket attacks is impossible without taking over the densely populated Jabaliya camp, which is more like a poor urban neighborhood, at great danger to both troops and civilians. Remaining in static positions is also dangerous, the army argued, and Mr. Sharon finally agreed to the redeployment on Thursday night.
Pressure on Israel was also increasing from foreign governments, especially from the Bush administration and the European Union, to end the operation, which was beginning "to seem disproportionate," as one American State Department official said.
Part of the army's goal, officials said, was to hit hard at the leadership and infrastructure of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza, which had built up considerably in the last four years. The army, with extensive use of camera drones and helicopter gunships, killed a number of militant commanders and destroyed metal factories and workshops where rockets are made, army officials said.
The army also wanted to send a sharp message to the West Bank: that Israel would not tolerate the Qassams anywhere in the Palestinian territories.
In that sense, one senior Israeli official said Saturday, "the operation can be called a real success." But it is not necessarily over, he said. In another sense, the operation had a political value, the official admitted - with Mr. Sharon proving that despite his intent to pull nearly 8,000 settlers from Gaza, he intends to protect Israel and its interests. In a symbolic vote against his opening speech to the Parliament last week, in which he talked of his plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, 15 of 40 members of his Likud Party voted against him, abstained or refused to vote. Mr. Sharon faces an important vote for real on his plan on Oct. 25.
Compared to the Palestinian dead during the Gaza operation, Israeli losses were small: three civilians, including two children killed by a Qassam in Sederot, two soldiers and a Thai farm worker.
On Friday night a Palestinian woman, 75, was shot dead while eating her dinner, breaking the fast of the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The Israeli military said it was investigating the incident and was not sure where the gunfire originated.
More details emerged from one of the most shocking incidents of the operation, involving the shooting of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl. Soldiers said their company commander broke the rules of war by firing a magazine into the head and body of the girl, Iman al-Hams, to "verify the kill" after she approached an outpost near Rafah.
A field investigation concluded that there was no evidence to substantiate the charges, but the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, suspended the commander on Friday.
The commander, a captain, was suspended for severe operational errors, army officials said, including leaving his post, bringing other soldiers away from the post, firing in panic at the ground, showing poor leadership and allowing a bad atmosphere in the company.
The military police are conducting a separate investigation, and the commander is likely to be court-martialed, the officials said. The field commanders concluded that soldiers at the post did not see the commander shoot the girl but had made operational errors themselves by letting her approach so close to the outpost before seeing her. They also noted that the soldiers had a history of bad blood with the commander.
The soldiers said they suspected the girl of carrying a bomb to the outpost; her family said she was lost on the way to school. Her schoolbag contained only books.
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Sharon Rejects Referendum Over Pullout
October 17, 2004
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rebuffed angry Jewish settlers Sunday, summarily rejecting their demand that he hold a national referendum on his plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip and dismantle two dozen Jewish settlements, settlers said.
Settler leaders warned that Sharon's plan and his refusal to even consider a nationwide vote were leading the country down the path of civil war.
"The meeting ... was a disgrace," said settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef. "We met a stubborn prime minister. He wouldn't answer any of our questions. He is determined to lead the people to a bottomless chasm."
Sharon has angered the settlers, once his most ardent supporters, with his "disengagement" plan for separating Israelis from the Palestinians by withdrawing from Gaza and dismantling four settlements in the northern West Bank.
Sharon says the plan will boost Israel's security after four years of fighting the Palestinians.
But settlers say the plan sets a dangerous precedent by conceding territory to the Palestinians and dismantling Jewish settlements.
Sharon has not met with settler leaders since making a sharp political reversal last year and talking about removing some settlements instead of building more. However, he agreed to meet with them in Jerusalem on Sunday, just a week before he presents his withdrawal plan to parliament.
Settler leaders hoped to persuade the premier to hold a national referendum, stipulating that both sides would agree to accept its results in advance.
Cabinet minister Limor Livnat suggested to Sharon earlier Sunday that the disengagement legislation to be presented to parliament make the withdrawal conditional on a referendum.
"I heard yesterday night that there is a good chance that they (the settlers) could accept such a formula ... in order to prevent a tear in the nation ... or even a civil war," Livnat told Israel Radio before meeting Sharon.
Opinion polls consistently show that a solid majority of Israelis support the Gaza withdrawal plan, but Sharon remained opposed to such a vote, which would delay implementation of the evacuation set to begin in May, his spokesman, Asaf Shariv, said.
Sharon already has lost two separate votes on his plan - both in his hard-line Likud Party - following intense campaigning by the settlers.
Sharon refused to budge during his Sunday meeting with the settlers and appeared to be reading answers to their questions off sheets of paper he had brought with him, settler leaders said.
"We did not get anything out of him. Nothing. Zero," said settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein. "It was one of the most shameful meetings I have ever had with the prime minister."
Wallerstein said the settlers would use all democratic means to resist Sharon's plan. Other meeting participants said they would continue to push for a referendum.
Settlers also are pushing for early elections instead of the currently scheduled November 2006 vote. Sharon lost his parliamentary majority during the debate over the plan and is shakily holding on to the reins of power.
Sharon pushed ahead with the planned withdrawal just as the army ended a broad operation in the northern Gaza Strip aimed at preventing militants from firing homemade rockets at Israeli towns. The constant rocket fire from Gaza, which has killed four Israelis, three of them young children, threatens to turn even supportive Israelis against the evacuation plan.
At least 110 Palestinians - including dozens of civilians - were killed during the 17-day incursion, making it the bloodiest military offensive in northern Gaza in four years of fighting.
At a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the army pulled back from northern Gaza because "the main goals of the operations were achieved," including damaging Hamas' ability to fire more rockets, according to a government statement issued after the meeting.
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Killing children is no longer a big deal
Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
October 17, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/489479.html
More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children "terror." Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1. According to B'Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors. Palestinian human rights groups speak of even higher numbers: 598 Palestinian children killed (up to age 17), according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, and 828 killed (up to age 18) according to the Red Crescent. Take note of the ages, too. According to B'Tselem, whose data are updated until about a month ago, 42 of the children who have been killed were 10; 20 were seven; and eight were two years old when they died. The youngest victims are 13 newborn infants who died at checkpoints during birth.
With horrific statistics like this, the question of who is a terrorist should have long since become very burdensome for every Israeli. Yet it is not on the public agenda. Child killers are always the Palestinians, the soldiers always only defend us and themselves, and the hell with the statistics.
The plain fact, which must be stated clearly, is that the blood of hundreds of Palestinian children is on our hands. No tortuous explanation by the IDF Spokesman's Office or by the military correspondents about the dangers posed to soldiers by the children, and no dubious excuse by the public relations people in the Foreign Ministry about how the Palestinians are making use of children will change that fact. An army that kills so many children is an army with no restraints, an army that has lost its moral code.
As MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash) said, in a particularly emotional speech in the Knesset, it is no longer possible to claim that all these children were killed by mistake. An army doesn't make more than 500 day-to-day mistakes of identity. No, this is not a mistake but the disastrous result of a policy driven mainly by an appallingly light trigger finger and by the dehumanization of the Palestinians. Shooting at everything that moves, including children, has become normative behavior. Even the momentary mini-furor that erupted over the "confirming of the killing" of a 13-year-old girl, Iman Alhamas, did not revolve around the true question. The scandal should have been generated by the very act of the killing itself, not only by what followed.
Iman was not the only one. Mohammed Aaraj was eating a sandwich in front of his house, the last house before the cemetery of the Balata refugee camp, in Nablus, when a soldier shot him to death at fairly close range. He was six at the time of his death. Kristen Saada was in her parents' car, on the way home from a family visit, when soldiers sprayed the car with bullets. She was 12 at the time of her death. The brothers Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz were riding their bicycles in full daylight, on their way to buy sweets, when they sustained a direct hit from a shell fired by an Israeli tank crew. Jamil was 13, Ahmed six, at the time of their deaths.
Muatez Amudi and Subah Subah were killed by a soldier who was standing in the village square in Burkin and fired every which way in the wake of stone-throwing. Radir Mohammed from Khan Yunis refugee camp was in a school classroom when soldiers shot her to death. She was 12 when she died. All of them were innocent of wrongdoing and were killed by soldiers acting in our name.
At least in some of these cases it was clear to the soldiers that they were shooting at children, but that didn't stop them. Palestinian children have no refuge: mortal danger lurks for them in their homes, in their schools and on their streets. Not one of the hundreds of children who have been killed deserved to die, and the responsibility for their killing cannot remain anonymous. Thus the message is conveyed to the soldiers: it's no tragedy to kill children and none of you is guilty.
Death is, of course, the most acute danger that confronts a Palestinian child, but it is not the only one. According to data of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 3,409 schoolchildren have been wounded in the intifada, some of them crippled for life. The childhood of tens of thousands of Palestinian youngsters is being lived from one trauma to the next, from horror to horror. Their homes are demolished, their parents are humiliated in front of their eyes, soldiers storm into their homes brutally in the middle of the night, tanks open fire on their classrooms. And they don't have a psychological service. Have you ever heard of a Palestinian child who is a "victim of anxiety"?
The public indifference that accompanies this pageant of unrelieved suffering makes all Israelis accomplices to a crime. Even parents, who understand what anxiety for a child's fate means, turn away and don't want to hear about the anxiety harbored by the parent on the other side of the fence. Who would have believed that Israeli soldiers would kill hundreds of children and that the majority of Israelis would remain silent? Even the Palestinian children have become part of the dehumanization campaign: killing hundreds of them is no longer a big deal.
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Cyprus again protests entry of IAF jets into its airspace
Haaretz
By Aluf Benn
October 17, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/489867.html
The government of Cyprus registered a strong protest with Israel on Sunday following an incident earlier this month in which two Israeli F-15 fighter planes entered Cypriot airspace while accompanying a Lufthansa passenger jet that was rerouted to Larnaca due to a false bomb threat. In the official protest delivered to the Israeli embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus claimed there was no need for Israel to get involved since it already agreed to have the plane land in Larnaca as requested by Lufthansa.
In the past, Cyprus has issued many complaints over Israel Air Force jets entering its airspace. In June 2000, the two countries came to terms over the usage of Cypriot airspace.
In an objection filed last week, Cyprus said that the ?Lufthansa affair? is not the only instance where Israel has violated terms of the understandings.
Cypriot authorities have requested Israel notify them beforehand in the future, adding that they are ready to provide assistance if needs be.
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Kerry could heal NATO's wounds but tensions to linger: analysts
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Oct 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041017022733.dxezrakf.html
US-European tensions within NATO are unlikely to disappear if George W. Bush is ousted from the White House, but a victory for John Kerry may help pave the way to a better understanding, pundits say.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is only just emerging from a profound crisis that strained transatlantic relations to breaking point last year in the run-up to the US-led war in Iraq.
On the face of it, a victory for Bush's Democratic challenger would accelerate the healing process at the military alliance.
The French government has staved off US calls for an international conference on Iraq until after the November 2 election -- a clear sign, observers say, that Paris does not want to play into Bush's hands.
But analysts also say that a dramatic departure for US foreign policy is unlikely if Kerry wins next month. That means US allies will still be counted on for support when it comes to the crunch.
Andre Dumoulin, a researcher at the Belgian Royal Institute of International Relations, said a victory for the Massachusetts senator would signal "a change of style, of rhetoric, but less of ideology".
Kerry has set out his foreign-policy stall by saying he would adopt a more multilateral approach than Bush.
Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father, former president George Bush, has angrily attacked US unilateralism under his old boss's son.
He told Thursday's Financial Times that US engagement with the United Nations and NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq was "as much an act of desperation as anything else... to rescue a failing venture".
At talks in Romania last week, Washington persuaded its NATO allies to consider ways to merge an Alliance-run peacekeeping operation with a US-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan.
The agreement came despite deep reservations from France and Germany, which also held out for a long time before conditionally relenting to US calls for NATO to expand a training mission in Iraq.
Paris and Berlin, which most bitterly opposed last year's invasion of Iraq, agreed to take part in training Iraqi troops, but only outside Iraq itself.
In a sense, therefore, a Kerry administration would be able to work on ground already laid by Bush in cajoling European allies into line.
But there are no guarantees that Kerry could count on European support for a broader multi-national coalition in Iraq to relieve the strain on US forces.
Germany has sent out conflicting signals over whether it might be prepared to commit its soldiers to Iraq.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has slapped down hints from his defence minister that Berlin could send troops, prompting a telephone call from US Secretary of State Colin Powell to his German counterpart for clarification.
France, for its part, has maintained a studied indifference to the prospect of a new incumbent in the White House.
But a President Kerry would, presumably, be able to come to Europe on a wave of goodwill -- opinion polls suggest an overwhelming number of Europeans want Bush out.
That spirit of post-Bush bonhomie, however, could even pose problems for some European capitals.
If the new US leader comes asking for military backing, "it will be more