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NUCLEAR
Nuclear comeback stokes terror fears
Rowland Nethaway: Let's use nuclear power
Tokyo Electric Shuts Nuclear Reactor After One Day (Update2)
TUC hosts nuclear power debate
Sellafield's £600m nuclear fuel factory faces closure before opening
SARDINIA: HEALTH COMMISSION, YES TO URANIUM INVESTIGATION
War syndrome 'will not be solved'
Iran Ready to Negotiate Enrichment Halt Length
Iran May Suspend Some Nuclear Activities
N. Korea's No. 2 Encourages Nuke Dialogue
'N Korea holds nuclear weapons'
Brazil and UN Try to Solve Nuke Impasse
U.N. Nuclear Inspectors Arrive in Brazil
UN inspectors seek access to Brazilian nuclear plant
Blair in secret deal to host US missiles
Boost-Phase Defense Not Effective For Protecting US: New Study
Prime Minister Martin says the Defence Department will get more money
Ukraine Markets Chernobyl Ghost City Tour
If You Want to Test a Nuke, Vienna's Watching
Wash. Voters to Wrestle With Waste Measure
Effect of Waste Vote, Not Outcome, Is at Issue
MILITARY
New Afghan Army a Match for Taliban, U.S. Says
Sudan's Darfur 'safer than Iraq'
Turkish FM denies plan to buy tanks from Germany: report
Britain Denies Troops Plan to Help Bush
No. 10 did not tell truth about Iraq, says diplomat who quit
Libyan mustard gas plant may be converted into pharmaceuticals factory
U.S. Buyers of Hussein's Oil Acted to Assist Iraq
U.S. asks Britain to move troops
As U.S. Forces Pound Fallujah, Fighting Rages on City's Edge
Iraqi PM to extend arms-for-cash scheme nationwide
Iraqi Officials Plan to Extend Buying of Arms
Deadly mortar attack marks end to failed Mehdi Army weapons exchange
Killing Drives Wedge Between Troops
Soldiers fear that they are 'sleeping with the enemy'
A War Without Reason
Settlers Say Israel Leader Rejects Vote on Pullout
Sharon Says Nothing Will Stop Gaza Plan
Official warns of Gaza upheaval
Israelis Kill 5 Palestinians
'When we came back they had destroyed all the houses'
Presbyterian Church May Pressure Israel
NATO chief starts tour of Central Asia
Brazil Signs Space Agreement With Russia
War in Iraq Did Not Make World Safer, Annan Says
U.S.: Too Early to Tell Iraq Unit's Fate
Unit balked at unarmored trucks
General Reported Shortages In Iraq
Japan committed to reducing U.S. military presence
The Reserve Mutiny How the Iraq war is crippling the Army Reserve.
Iowa police donate body armor to troops
Pentagon Rewards Abu Ghraib Accomplices
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court to Consider Shackling Defendants
Intelligence reform before election looks unlikely
Poll: Antiterror tech plans are flawed
Northwest Plane Evacuated in Fargo, N.D.
Israeli Security Thrust Flouts Human Rights
Group: Israel Violating International Law
Police Show Strain From Endless Alerts
Troopers train with non-lethal weapon
Ex-Gitmo detainees return to terror
Ex-Guantánamo Bay workers claim prisoner abuse was widespread
Zarqawi militia joining al Qaeda
Sweeping win for Belarus leader
Belarus Says Vote Allows President to Run Again
Dalai Lama says Tibet is better off within China
Bush Signs $33 Billion Security Budget
S.C. hopefuls vow to fully arm troops
Sept. 11 widows slam Bush's anti-terror record
Colorado combats voter fraud
ENERGY
FedEx to Build 2nd - Largest U.S. Private Solar System
OTHER
Standoff in Congress Blocks Action on Environmental Bills
ACTIVISTS
Hundreds Protest as Belarus Leader Sweeps Election
N.J. Mom Vows to Keep Protesting Iraq War
Tahiti crisis sparks mass protest
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear comeback stokes terror fears
International Herald Tribune By Katrin Bennhold October 18, 2004 http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/17/news/nuke.html
PARIS With uncertainties increasing about supplies of natural gas and oil, nuclear energy is making a powerful global comeback, prompting concerns about atomic terrorism in the post-Sept. 11 era.
A number of countries around the world, from China to Finland and the United States, are gearing up to build new reactors as demand for electricity grows. Governments are also viewing nuclear power as a way to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, given intensifying concern over global warming.
But the prospect of an atomic renaissance is raising the uncomfortable question of whether an expansion of nuclear power is compatible with the fight against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
"Neither politics nor technology has an answer to this question right now," Gerard Stoudman, director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy, said in an interview at a recent international conference on homeland security.
"It's really bad timing," said Alain Marsaud, president of the domestic security group in the French Parliament.
"We're coming to the end of the economic use of fossil fuels at a time when terrorists are trying to get their hands on nuclear material or target nuclear infrastructure," Marsaud said in an interview at the conference, which was held in Geneva. "If the world is condemned to use more nuclear power, it will be a real challenge."
With 439 reactors operating in 31 countries around the world, nuclear power accounts for about 16 percent of global power production today, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. And with demand for electricity expected to increase almost fivefold over the next five decades, the agency says reactor capacity could quadruple by 2050.
The Far East is projected to lead worldwide growth over the next two decades, more than doubling its output.
Experts at the UN energy agency cite three risks in the expansion of nuclear power: theft by terrorists of weapons-grade plutonium stripped out from radioactive waste during reprocessing; an attack on a nuclear installation or transport convoy; and, as suspected with Iran and North Korea, an attempt by countries developing a nuclear power sector to build weapons with the same technology.
"If you have more nuclear material in the world, you have a higher proliferation risk - it's a truism," said Alan McDonald, a nuclear expert at the agency. But with demand for electricity increasing across the globe, he added, nuclear energy remains important despite the risks.
Signaling the nuclear revival, 31 reactors are currently under construction worldwide. China plans to add 32 nuclear power plants to its existing 11 by 2020, while India, currently with 14 plants, aims to triple its reactor capacity over the next eight years.
Japan, South Korea, Ukraine, Romania and Argentina are all in the process of adding to nuclear capacity as well.
Finland recently commissioned the first new plant in Western Europe since 1999. France - the biggest per-capita user of nuclear energy in the world - is planning to build one shortly (the site has not yet been chosen), and British officials are softening their language on nuclear energy.
Loyola de Palacio, the European Union's departing energy commissioner, said last month that the EU would have to retain the option of building up its nuclear capacity. "With the challenge of climate change, the EU cannot avoid nuclear energy for the foreseeable future," she said.
Even in the United States, where no new reactor has been built since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, the nuclear industry is stirring - not least because of encouraging noises from the Bush administration.
Twenty-six U.S. plants have received 20-year extensions of their operating licenses and 18 others have applied for extensions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after the administration streamlined the relicensing process.
Three plant operators, Exelon, Dominion and Entergy, have asked the commission to approve sites for future reactors, although no concrete plans for building them have been announced yet. And Westinghouse, architect of nearly half of the world's nuclear power plants, had its design for a plant known as the "advanced reactor" approved by the commission on Sept. 13.
The industry, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, America's nuclear industry group, is at the starting gate.
"We are positioning ourselves for the fact that over the next decade our country will need a lot more electricity," Kerekes said. The goal for the industry, he said, is to raise its share of American electricity generation from the current 20 percent to 24 percent over the next 15 years. If natural gas prices keep rising, it will become economical to pay the hefty price - about $3 billion each - of building new nuclear plants, he said.
The risk of terrorists targeting nuclear infrastructure was made plain on Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, Western policy makers, from President George W. Bush to the EU's security chief, Javier Solana, have explicitly made the fight against nuclear terrorism a priority. Bush has said that Americans' "highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction." His Democratic challenger in next month's presidential election, Senator John Kerry, put it this way in a speech in June: "No material. No bomb. No terrorism."
At nuclear plants in many countries, 9/11 has led to stricter security requirements. In the United States since the terror attacks, plant owners will have spent an extra $1 billion by the end of this year on more restrictive access controls, heavily armed guards, additional training for their security personnel and vehicle checks in an enlarged perimeter around the reactors to avoid truck bombs.
According to Wolfgang Kröger, a nuclear engineer and vice president of the International Risk and Governance Council, an independent foundation with headquarters in Geneva, the danger of terrorists targeting nuclear infrastructure or transport vehicles has been played up by opponents. "There are a lot of much simpler ways to do damage and kill people," he argues.
But with most of the projected growth in nuclear power taking place in the developing world, where safety measures may not match the same standards, concerns are growing.
Perhaps the greatest worry circulating in national defense departments and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels is the development of nuclear weapons on the back of civilian energy programs.
This dilemma goes to the heart of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of which the International Atomic Energy Agency is the guardian. In addition to nuclear disarmament, the treaty commits its 184 signatories to police and control the proliferation of nuclear material and at the same time obliges nuclear powers to offer nuclear technology to others for electricity generation.
But as one senior diplomat at NATO put it: "You cannot artificially separate the civilian from the military aspect - everyone here is aware of that. As such, you also cannot separate the debate on nuclear proliferation from the debate on alternative sources of energy."
Every state that has sought to develop a nuclear weapons program since the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty came into effect in 1970 has done so on the back of civilian power or nuclear research programs - from Israel to India and Pakistan and, according to its government, North Korea.
The motivation for building nuclear weapons has increased with the spread of nuclear power, as countries view neighbors' stockpiles of civilian material with suspicion. To justify its weapons program, North Korea cites the five tons of radioactive material now stockpiled in Japan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency wants to curb proliferation by securing the nuclear fuel cycle with a process called fuel leasing, McDonald said. Rather than exporting enrichment or reprocessing technology to newcomers, the agency maintains, nuclear powers should export lightly enriched uranium, which cannot be used to make a bomb, and subsequently take back the radioactive waste, which contains plutonium.
But opponents say the proposal is flawed for two reasons: It would lead to the regular transport of radioactive material across the globe, potentially tempting terrorists. And it risks meeting public opposition in Europe, where the issue of radioactive waste has been one of the main reasons for public skepticism toward nuclear energy.
"These solutions don't stand up in the real world," said Mike Townsley, director of communications for Greenpeace International. "You'd get shipments crisscrossing the planet every week, and I think you'll find that people in the U.K. or Russia would not tolerate an influx of radioactive waste.''
--------
Rowland Nethaway: Let's use nuclear power
WACO (TEXAS) TRIBUNE HERALD
BY ROWLAND NETHAWAY
October 18, 2004
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=609&u_sid=1232491
Americans need to get over their irrational fear of nuclear power.
Without nuclear power or a miracle breakthrough in a cost- effective alternative energy source, Americans can look forward to a steady erosion in their quality of life.
The price of oil will go up and down, but demand for oil has nowhere to go but up.
Every impoverished, under-developed nation wants to improve the lives of its citizens, a moral imperative supported by U.S. foreign policy. The move from under-developed to developed means greater energy demands.
With China and India, the world's two most populous nations, on the road to becoming economic powerhouses, demand for oil pushes upward, escalating the price of gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil and millions of everyday petrochemical byproducts.
Conservation can offer some immediate relief to the demand for energy. Research and development of alternative energy is a long shot, but it should be a national priority in the same way that the government funds cancer research.
All fossil fuels - oil, coal and natural gas - present environmental problems because they emit a variety of polluting com- bustion byproducts that include carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas.
Nuclear power can produce as much energy as the nation needs. Electricity from nuclear plants could produce reliable supplies of hydrogen or other alternative fuels and even produce fresh water from oceans.
In addition, nuclear power does not pollute the air with combustion byproducts.
The problem is that Americans fear nuclear power after Three Mile Island (which hurt no one) and Chernobyl.
The United States has stopped building nuclear power plants, but it still has more than 100 working plants that operate safely and efficiently.
There are risks, of course, but they are manageable. The day may be coming when we must choose between lowering our quality of life, polluting the environment or living with the remote risk associated with new nuclear power plants.
-------- accidents and safety
Tokyo Electric Shuts Nuclear Reactor After One Day (Update2)
(Bloomberg)
Oct. 18, 2004
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000101&sid=accl0Oha5fC0&refer=japan
-- Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia's largest power producer, halted a nuclear reactor, less than a day after it restarted, because a control valve didn't open fully.
Tokyo Electric stopped operations at the 1,100-megawatt, Fukushima Daini No. 4 reactor located in Fukushima prefecture at 8:37 a.m. local time on Sunday, said spokesman Katsuya Uchino.
The Tokyo-based utility brought the reactor back online at about 10 a.m. on Saturday. It had been shut since October 2002 to check for cracks in pipes.
Tokyo Electric admitted in August 2002 that it falsified repair reports and hid cracks at its nuclear reactors for at least a decade, to avoid shutdowns that would halt power generation.
Tokyo Electric brought its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No. 6 reactor into full operation on Oct. 15. The 1,356-megawatt reactor was shut in July for planned checks.
The company shut the Fukushima Daiichi No. 5 reactor on Oct. 13. The local government of Fukushima asked Tokyo Electric to replace a pipe at the 784-megawatt reactor before scheduled inspections next month.
Nine of the utility's 17 reactors are in operation.
To contact the reporter on this story: Meggan Richard in Tokyo at mrichard3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Langan at plangan@bloomberg.net.
-------- britain
TUC hosts nuclear power debate
bbc
18 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/3751306.stm
The TUC says policy makers need to face up to tough choices More nuclear power stations may need to be built in Wales as the UK's gas and oil stocks diminish, trade unionists have been told in Cardiff on Monday.
The Wales TUC is staging a conference in the city to address the future energy needs of the nation.
Speakers have warned that failure to act now could spell disaster for workers, communities and businesses.
But Friends of the Earth Cymru says Wales' energy needs can be met through renewable sources.
There is increasing doubt about whether renewable energy generation such as wind farms can meet our future energy needs Derek Walker, TUC
The conference, entitled 'Could the Lights Go Out in Wales?' is being supported by npower and the Trade Unions for Safe Nuclear Energy (TUSNE).
Speaking ahead of the gathering at Cardiff's Angel Hotel, Derek Walker, the Wales TUC's head of policy and campaigns, said the aim was to outline the tough choices facing policy makers.
"The UK will soon become a net importer of gas and oil," he said.
"However, the sources of gas and oil will be from some of the world's most unstable countries where security of supply and price may not be guaranteed."
Energy deficit
Mr Walker said there needed to be a diverse energy supply and, at this stage, nuclear energy should not be discounted as part of the solution.
"Global energy demand is likely to double over the next 50 years," he added.
"There is increasing doubt about whether renewable energy generation such as wind farms can meet our future energy needs, resulting in a potential energy deficit.
"Decisions on just how we fill that deficit will need to be made quickly and this conference will be a major contributor to that debate."
Among those taking part on Monday will be Malcolm Grimston, senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, who has argued the case for replacing the UK's retiring nuclear plants.
He said nuclear power currently accounts for just under 25% of the electricity generated in the UK and most nuclear stations will reach the end of their lives in the next 20 years or less.
Off-shore wind farms
"Unless replacements are ordered soon, the proportion of electricity generated in nuclear stations may fall to just 3% by 2020," he said.
But Neil Crumpton of Friends of the Earth Cymru told the Politics Show on BBC1 on Sunday renewable energy could meet all of Wales' electricity needs in the future.
"We can produce about 30% of Wales electricity by 2012 just with existing policies and off-shore wind farms in Liverpool Bay," he said.
"We have tidal lagoons in the Seven Estuary and Liverpool Bay than could generate more (electricity) than Wales consumes."
--------
Sellafield's £600m nuclear fuel factory faces closure before opening
The Guardian
October 18, 2004
Paul Brown and Rob Evans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1329787,00.html
A nuclear fuel plant that has so far cost the taxpayer more than £600m without generating any income may be shut down.
An inquiry by Sir John Bourn, the head of parliament's watchdog, the National Audit Office, following a Guardian investigation, has revealed that the option of closure is being discussed within the government. It could mean that the factory at Sellafield in Cumbria, known as the mox plant because it makes new nuclear fuel from mixed oxides of plutonium and uranium, is shut down before it completes its first contract. But Sir John also found that closure would cost a significant extra amount of public money.
In July the Guardian revealed that Tony Blair had overruled warnings from ministers that the factory would be a financial disaster when he ordered the plant to start production. Serious technical problems have meant that the plant, now eight years behind schedule, has not yet produced a single saleable item.
Sir John reveals that costs have shot up by £225m, piling up the debts of the already technically bankrupt, state-owned British Nuclear Fuels.
The inquiry was launched at the instigation of Michael Meacher, the former environment minister. While in the government, Mr Meacher had advised against opening the plant, but was overruled by Mr Blair.
Mr Meacher said yesterday: "It is astonishing that the government is in the position of considering closing the plant before it has produced anything. The situation is far worse than I thought."
In a report, Sir John says that "any decision on the future of the [plant] will involve a choice between continuing to operate and closure". He adds that "a decision to close immediately would incur large costs, including contractual penalty payments to customers".
BNFL has claimed that it could win enough orders to make the plant financially viable, but has only been able to land two contracts.
Sir John reports that BNFL continues to claim that it will be able to secure enough contracts to keep the plant going: "Furthermore, their assessment indicates that it would be much more expensive to close the plant immediately than to continue operating."
The plant is intended to reuse plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel rods from overseas power stations, to produce new fuel for these stations. The DTI said it was assessing the improvement programme for the mox plant and deciding whether the technical problems could be overcome.
Sir John's report says it is "likely" that the government will review the future of the plant when it takes over direct responsibility for it in April.
At that point, BNFL's rising debts could embarrass the Treasury, which has anticipated a large income from the mox plant to fund Britain's nuclear clean-up. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which will come into existence in April to take charge of the clean-up of Britain's nuclear waste mountain, has been told by the Treasury that half its annual £2bn costs should come from income from Sellafield's mox plant and associated reprocessing works.
-------- depleted uranium
SARDINIA: HEALTH COMMISSION, YES TO URANIUM INVESTIGATION
(AGI)
October 18, 2004
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200410131959-1235-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia
- Cagliari - The health commission of the Sardinian Regional Council has unanimously approved the resolution that gives the go-ahead to the investigation into the effects of depleted uranium on the island. From next week the hearings will begin with representative associations and citizens committees, unions of towns substantially involved in military operations and those responsible for military health. The commissioners have been given a fat dossier that, besides press articles, contains the results of investigations in Sardinia near firing ranges and those coming from the Mandelli parliamentary commission. The aim of the investigation, which will be undertaken by the commission for a number of months, is to check if there is an objective responsibility for the higher levels of deaths and suspect cases in the zones close to military firing ranges and if the Sardinia region has not been informed of certain particulars concerning the military presence on their island. (AGI) Cli/Rob/Cog 131959 OTT 04
--------
War syndrome 'will not be solved'
bbc
18 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3752140.stm
Some 6,000 Gulf veterans have suffered from various complaints The causes of "Gulf war syndrome" are still not known and probably never will be, experts believe.
Some 6,000 veterans have suffered unexplained poor health since the 1991 war, including depression and tumours.
But weeks before an inquiry is due to report and after a leak of a US probe said chemicals were to blame, UK experts said the cause was a mystery.
And Simon Wessely, director of the Gulf War Research Unit, claimed scientists may never understand the problem.
He said: "It is 14 years since the war and we have learnt a fair amount since then.
He added: "There are huge areas that remain unclear and I am afraid I suspect they will always remain unclear."
Illnesses
Prof Wessely, who is also professor of epidemiological psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said he could not comment on reports that a US inquiry had found the syndrome did exist and was caused by toxic chemicals.
Prof Wessely refuses to use the term syndrome but accepts the veterans have experienced a higher number of illnesses.
He said: "I am completely certain that there is no single cause."
The Ministry of Defence, which does not recognise the syndrome as a medical condition, saying the symptoms are too varied to be considered part of a wider syndrome, has also refused to comment on the US findings.
Controversy has surrounded so-called Gulf war syndrome since veterans began to experience more ill health than military personnel who had served in previous and subsequent conflicts.
Rockets containing sarin set for destruction Personnel received vaccines against biological weapons threats
While veterans have not experienced more heart disease or cancer, the levels of general ill health, including mood swings, memory loss, lack of concentration and night sweats, have been 20% higher.
Some have blamed the high number of vaccines and medication given to the armed forces to protect them against a variety of illnesses, including anthrax.
Others have suggested it was caused by chemicals, such as pesticides and nerve agents, or exposure to depleted uranium which was used in weapons.
Vaccines
But UK researchers have dismissed the theories.
Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group on depleted uranium munitions, said the exposure would have been "too low".
And Professor Mark Peakman, from Guy's, King's and St Thomas's School of Medicine, who has done research on the effect of vaccines, said he did not believe the multiple vaccines administered were to blame either.
However, he admitted the theory that vaccines and chemicals interacted in some way "still lurks".
Shaun Rusling, vice chairman of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, accused the scientists of having "cold hearts" and "closed minds".
"The US has been far more advanced at looking in to this. The clinical scientific evidence is irrefutable.
"The US study said it wasn't caused by the stress of fighting the war but the chemicals we came into contact with.
"It is disgusting the British government and scientists don't admit this."
The Gulf war syndrome inquiry, funded by anonymous donors and headed by former judge Lord Lloyd of Berwick, is due to unveil its findings in the next few weeks.
-------- iran
Iran Ready to Negotiate Enrichment Halt Length
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html?oref=login
TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it was willing to negotiate with European nations the length of its uranium enrichment suspension but will never renounce its right to carry out the process, which can be used to make atom bombs.
``If they (the EU trio) want to negotiate about tactics such as how long Iran will suspend uranium enrichment for, then these are negotiable,'' Hassan Rohani, secretary general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television.
``But if the issue is to stop Iran from pursuing its right, our representatives are not even allowed to have talks about these issues with anyone,'' Rohani said.
The European Union's top three powers Britain, Germany and France are expected to present a proposal to Iran this week aimed at convincing the Islamic state to give up its pursuit of uranium enrichment.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned Tehran it could be reported to the United Nations Security Council if it has failed to halt all enrichment activities by the time of the next IAEA board meeting on Nov. 25.
Washington says Iran's nuclear program is geared to producing nuclear weapons. Tehran says it wants to master the full nuclear fuel cycle to provide fuel for atomic reactors that generate electricity.
Although it is not enriching uranium at present, Iran has gone back on an earlier promise to the EU trio to halt related activities such as the manufacture and assembly of enrichment centrifuges.
Iran insists its suspension of enrichment is ``temporary and voluntary.'' Rohani again said on Monday that the suspension would only be ``for a short time.''
``It is not acceptable for us for someone to tell us that it's okay for European countries or the United States to have the fuel cycle and nuclear power plants but that Iran cannot,'' Rohani said.
Rohani, Iran's chief negotiator on the nuclear issue, reiterated that Tehran believed its nuclear dossier at the IAEA should be closed.
``We have answered all the questions which the inspectors asked. We have nothing more to say,'' he said.
``If Iran's case is not closed in November it will harm the IAEA's reputation more than it will harm Iran because then the whole world would know that the IAEA is under pressure from some countries such as the United States.''
--------
Iran May Suspend Some Nuclear Activities
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Monday it is prepared to temporarily suspend some nuclear activities but would not surrender its right to enrich uranium.
The remarks by the country's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, came just as the three major European powers were expected to offer Iran a package of economic incentives in hopes of persuading Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons and reactors.
The move by Britain, France and Germany, expected this week, is designed to head off a confrontation between Iran and the U.N. nuclear agency, where the United States has been arguing that Iran has secret plans to build atomic weapons.
``From a tactical point of view, discussion on how long to continue suspension (of some nuclear activities) is negotiable,'' Rowhani told state television Monday.
``But if the discussion is about depriving us of our legitimate right (to manage the cycle of nuclear fuel), it's not negotiable. Our negotiating team is not authorized to discuss this either with Europeans or others,'' Rowhani said.
Any suspension of nuclear activities would have to be for ``a short period,'' he said. He did not specify what activities Iran would suspend.
Iran says its nuclear program is devoted entirely to electricity generation. Its first nuclear reactor, built with Russia assistance, is due to come on stream next year.
But the country has come under intense international pressure to halt uranium enrichment.
Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency unanimously passed a resolution demanding that Iran freeze all work on uranium enrichment and related activities, such as uranium reprocessing and the building of centrifuges used for enrichment.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog is due to meet Nov. 25 to judge Iran's compliance. An unsatisfactory judgment could put Iran at risk of U.N. Security Council sanctions.
Iran has already defied the IAEA resolution by continuing to build centrifuges and by converting a few tons of raw uranium into hexafluoride gas, a stage before enrichment.
Iran has branded the IAEA resolution as illegal and says the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty entitles it to enrich uranium.
``We have some red lines. We have some principles. And we won't give up our principles,'' Rowhani said. ``It's unacceptable for us that we are told Europeans and Americans have the right to manage the cycle of nuclear fuel and possess nuclear power plants, but Iran doesn't.''
Rowhani said Iran had done all it could do to remove doubts about its nuclear program.
``We have provided the IAEA with all the information required to remove ambiguities and answered all the questions which the inspectors asked,'' he said.
-------- korea
N. Korea's No. 2 Encourages Nuke Dialogue
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-NKorea.html
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea's No. 2 leader said Monday that his country still wants to settle the dispute over its nuclear program through dialogue, as China tried to cajole the North back into stalled six-nation talks, calling for flexibility by all sides.
Kim Yong Nam began a visit to Beijing on Monday amid of flurry of efforts to restart the talks on Washington's demand for the North to give up its nuclear ambitions. Participants missed a September deadline for holding a new round after the North refused to take part.
``The situation of the Korean Peninsula is still complicated, but the North Korean side would like to find a peaceful solution of the nuclear issue through dialogue,'' state television quoted Kim as telling his Chinese counterpart, Wu Bangguo.
The report didn't say, however, whether Kim was referring to the six-nation talks, which also include host China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
The United States is pressing the North to give up its nuclear program and allow international inspections. The North wants aid in exchange. Japan and South Korea have offered fuel, but it isn't clear whether that would satisfy the North, which has demanded security guarantees and is believed to be hoping for diplomatic relations with Washington.
Wu told Kim that settling the dispute was the ``common wish'' of the international community, state television said.
``Although the process of the talks has at present encountered some problems, I believe the talks can go on if every party shows sincerity, patience and flexibility,'' Wu was quoted as saying during the meeting at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China's legislature.
The newscast did not give any more details of their talks.
Kim is also scheduled to meet Chinese president Hu Jintao this week.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to visit Japan, China and South Korea next weekend in a possible attempt to arrange a new round of talks. But it appears increasingly unlikely that it will take place before the U.S. presidential election in November.
China's ambassador for the nuclear dispute, Ning Fukui, visited South Korea last week to discuss ways to restart the talks. He later traveled to Washington, where he met senior U.S. officials.
Kim is head of the Presidium of North Korea's parliament, second in line behind North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Kim Yong Nam acts as his country's ceremonial head of state.
China is North Korea's last major ally and biggest aid donor, but has told other governments that it has only limited influence over Kim Jong Il's isolated dictatorship.
Also Monday, Kim Yong Nam visited Beijing's Zhongguancun district, the center of China's high-tech industry, and toured a 4-year-old government enterprise set up to foster development of new technology companies.
The North Korean leader received a briefing on the company and the surrounding technology park, located in an area that Beijing has dubbed ``China's Silicon Valley.''
China has hosted a series of such visits by Kim Jong Il and other North Korean leaders to study Chinese economic reforms in hopes that the North might try to revive its decrepit centrally planned economy by allowing similar changes.
North Korea has set up a fledgling software industry, which held a trade show in Beijing in 2002, though it isn't clear how effective it has been at developing marketable products.
--------
'N Korea holds nuclear weapons'
The News International
October 18, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2004-daily/18-10-2004/main/main13.htm
TOKYO: 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 on 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.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil and UN Try to Solve Nuke Impasse
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-brazil.html
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - The United Nations and Brazil moved on Monday to break a months-long deadlock over inspections to verify Latin America's largest nation is not diverting enriched uranium for weapons.
U.N. nuclear experts met officials from the Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission and other nuclear-related bodies in Rio de Janeiro before Tuesday's visit to the Resende plant in Rio state, where enrichment can only begin with U.N. approval.
Odair Dias Goncalves, president of the government's commission, said the International Atomic Energy Agencyteam would verify if Brazil's latest proposal for inspections being confined to parts of the new plant would guarantee adequate control over nuclear nonproliferation.
``We are very optimistic that they will accept (our proposal),'' Goncalves told reporters. ``Then in a couple of weeks they will send inspectors and hopefully we'll start commissioning the plant. That would take about 6 months.''
The United States believes Brazil wants only peaceful nuclear power programs. But it has pressed its ally to break the deadlock and avoid setting an example to Iran and North Korea, which it believes have defied the IAEA to develop bombs.
Brazil has insisted it needs to protect its intellectual and technological property from possible industrial espionage and would not allow future inspections to see the centrifuges where uranium is enriched.
Brazil, home to the world's fourth largest reserve of uranium, says its enrichment operations will be entirely peaceful and also very small compared to other countries. The country has two nuclear reactors and is mulling a third.
The first enrichment unit of the Resende plant needs a green light from IAEA to start working.
Brazil has so far refused to allow what the IAEA sees as adequate access to centrifuges at Resende.
MORE FLEXIBLE
Goncalves said the IAEA has become more flexible and was no longer demanding ``total and unrestricted access.''
But the IAEA said earlier it needs a certain amount of direct access to the centrifuges so it can know how fast they spin to purify the uranium, along with other details to check that all the uranium going into the plant is accounted for.
A diplomat in Vienna who follows the IAEA said on condition of anonymity said that although there is no deal yet, the agency's experts ``hope to reach a deal while they're there.''
Inspectors were not available for comment as negotiations on nuclear safeguards are classified information.
Enrichment is a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or in weapons. Weapons-grade uranium is normally about 20 times more enriched than fuel.
A prominent nuclear analyst has said the IAEA is also concerned that a Pakistani scientist who supplied sensitive nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea may also have worked with Brazil.
Brazil dismissed the allegation as having ``no coherence'' and the IAEA played down the comments.
--------
U.N. Nuclear Inspectors Arrive in Brazil
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Brazil-Nuclear.html
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- A top Brazilian official said Monday that United Nations nuclear inspectors were no longer insisting on unrestricted access to the country's uranium enrichment facilities.
Odair Dias Goncalves, president of Brazil's National Nuclear Energy Commission, said he hoped the International Atomic Energy Agency's new position would help resolve a dispute over the country's plans to enrich uranium.
``The agency has agreed that it is possible to put safeguards in place without total and unrestricted access,'' Goncalves said at news conference.
The comments from Goncalves were the first official confirmation of such an agreement between the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and Brazil, which has for months rejected calls to allow inspectors to conduct a full visual inspection of the centrifuges at the nuclear facility in Resende.
Three high-level IAEA inspectors arrived Monday in Rio de Janeiro and planned to visit the plant in Resende, about 60 miles northwest of Rio, on Tuesday. Goncalves said the IAEA inspectors would not comment during to the press during their visit, as is customary.
Uranium enriched to low levels is used for fuel to generate power. More highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium can be used in nuclear warheads. Brazil denies it is building such arms.
Brazil had cited fears that the Resende plant's advanced technology could be stolen by other countries if outsiders were allowed to view it.
Brazil says it has developed new electromagnetic technology that reduces friction in the centrifuges and makes them 30 percent more efficient than those used in other countries.
Some analysts have suggested, however, that Brazil will not allow inspectors full access because it purchased the technology on the nuclear black market -- a charge the government denies.
Goncalves said he expects the inspectors to approve the alternative inspection system and send another team shortly to approve the plant's design -- a move that would allow Brazil to begin enriching uranium.
Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that Brazil and the IAEA were working on an alternative inspection plan that would assure inspectors that no enriched uranium is being diverted abroad or refined to weapons-grade levels.
``We want the IAEA safeguards,'' Campos said in an exclusive interview published Monday. ``We want to facilitate their work, but we want to do so in an alternative manner -- something that wasn't our previous proposal, nor full visual inspection.''
At a September meeting in the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Brazil proposed that the agency could inspect the tubes leading to and from the centrifuge, but not the centrifuges themselves, Campos said.
The weekly news magazine Veja, citing an unidentified government official, said the new Brazilian proposal would allow inspectors a partial view by slightly lowering the six-foot panels that surround the centrifuges.
--------
UN inspectors seek access to Brazilian nuclear plant
(AFP)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041018182509.6nrmrtfn.html
RIO DE JANEIRO - Three UN nuclear experts on Monday discussed terms with Brazilian officials for the inspection of a nuclear facility to which Brazil has refused access for fear of revealing trade secrets.
The inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), already locked in a battle with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, arrived at the Rio de Janeiro office of the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) early Monday.
On Tuesday, they are to visit the Resende nuclear plant in Rio state where Brazil wants to enrich uranium.
Brazil, which has one of the world's largest uranium reserves, denied IAEA inspectors access to the facility in February and March.
The South American nation opposes a visual IAEA inspection, claiming it has a novel method of enriching uranium that it wants to protect.
"This uranium enrichment process is extremely efficient because it saves a lot of energy," Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos told Folha de Sao Paulo in an interview published Monday.
"We do not believe it to be necessary (for inspectors) to visualize the physical format of the centrifuges and the way they are supported on the floor," Campos told the daily.
IAEA inspectors want to ensure that Brazil is respecting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei has said Brazil should not be an exception to the organization's norms.
Uranium enrichment makes fuel for civilian reactors but can also be used to make the explosive core of atomic bombs. The IAEA is mandated under the NPT to make sure member states do not divert nuclear material for military purposes.
The US government said in April that it was confident Brazil was not developing nuclear weapons.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed Brazil's nuclear program with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and said Washington had no proliferation worries.
In contrast, the United States has accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and the IAEA has set a November 25 deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities and answer all questions about its nuclear ambitions.
Campos rejected any comparison between Brazil and Iran or North Korea, which kicked inspectors out of the country in 2002 and claims to have a nuclear weapon.
"There is no Iran syndrome" in Brazil, he said in an interview published Monday in Correio Braziliense. "There is no atomic mystery. Brazil does not represent a nuclear threat."
CNEN's spokesman, Luis Machado, told AFP the IAEA inspectors had asked that their names not be released and that no press conference was planned.
Resende's centrifuges would produce 60 percent of the needs of the Angra I and Angra II electric power plants located 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Rio, according to Brazilian plans. They would produce two million kilowatts of power.
"Monday we will discuss the technical details for the inspection of the three IAEA technicians," Laercio Vihnas, a top official at CNEN, said Friday.
"Tuesday there will be a visit at the Resende plant to check whether the practical application of these technical details is possible," he said.
-------- missile defense
Blair in secret deal to host US missiles
Scotsman.com
JIM PRIDE
18 Oct 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1209532004
TONY Blair faces the threat of a back-bench revolt over a secret deal to base US "Son-of-Star Wars" missiles on British soil.
The Prime Minister has already sanctioned the use of UK radar stations in the programme, which will protect America from nuclear attack, despite opposition from his own MPs.
Now Mr Blair appears to have gone much further, giving an "agreement in principle" to host batteries that would shoot down weapons fired at the US.
The pact was reportedly brokered back in May on the condition it remained secret until after the forthcoming general election.
Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence insist the final decision on basing missiles in Britain has not yet been made. "This is a decision for the future when the US system has further evolved," a MoD spokesman said. However, that echoes the initial government response to reports that British radar stations would be involved in the programme, reports later confirmed by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary .
Critics fear the programme will further embolden Mr Bush as well as raising the risk of a terrorist attack on Britain.
Half of the parliamentary Labour Party signed a Commons motion in 2001, tabled by the Aberdeen North MP, Malcolm Savidge, condemning any UK involvement in the project.
Last night, Mr Savidge predicted fresh unrest on the back benches over a decision to deepen British commitment. "Hosting missiles takes it much further. There will be considerable concern that we seem to be increasingly sucked into the Bush administration's agenda.
"A lot of people across the country, as well as in the party, will be concerned if, as I suspect, Star Wars has always been seen by those advocating it, not as a defensive strategy, but something behind which the US can pursue an increasingly aggressive pre-emptive strategy, like Iraq."
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, voiced "grave concern" over the development, which he said would have major long-term implications for the UK.
He said: "The House of Commons needs to be fully informed with a proper debate in which the government sets out its objectives and its reasoning. That debate will only be properly informed if the government does not hide behind 'national security'. We should not have to hope for freedom of information legislation in the United States to enable us to be properly informed."
Gerald Howarth, the shadow defence minister, said the government had "consistently kept parliament and the public in the dark about its intentions".
"We suspect they do not want a debate because any policy of stationing such defensive weapons on UK soil will be met with hostility from Labour backbenchers," he said. "This appears to be another case of government deceit."
A missile shield to protect the US and its allies from long-range attack was initially envisaged by former Republican president Ronald Reagan, and Mr Bush has pledged, if re-elected, to spend around $10 billion to realise his dream.
Work has already started on a £449 million upgrade to RAF Fylingdales, north Yorkshire, to make it part of the programme. At this point, however, the government has only confirmed it will allow the US to use early-warning radar at the base.
Sixteen interceptor missiles are currently being located by the US in Alaska and California. The intended location of the remaining 24 is secret, but the Pentagon is known to want to station more in Europe.
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 place missiles there.
The UK agreement to host missiles apparently came three months earlier, when British embassy officials met Pentagon and state department officials in Washington.
Ministers are said to be confident they can win public backing for the project. They will insist the US has respected two "red lines" - that the system is strictly defensive, and that it will cost the UK taxpayer nothing. Mr Blair will argue Britain has been given an extra line of defence at no cost and point to the willingness of east European countries to take part.
But none of this will persuade Labour MPs such as left-winger Diane Abbott. "It is another example of how we appear to be in the pocket of America," she said. "We have no national interest in having American missiles on British soil."
--------
Boost-Phase Defense Not Effective For Protecting US: New Study
(SPX)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04zf.html
College Park MD - 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.
--------
Prime Minister Martin says the Defence Department will get more money
Canadian Press
Oct 18, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1845&ncid=737&e=1&u=/cpress/20041018/ca_pr_on_na/missile_defence_vote
OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin says the Defence Department will get more money even as its expenditures are examined.
All government departments will undergo line-by-line review of expenditures as "an essential part of good management," he said Monday. However, the Liberals will live up to an election campaign promise to increase overall military spending, he said.
On another defence matter, he said the Commons will vote on the controversial U.S.-led missile defence program.
However, the vote won't commit the Liberals to any decision on participating in the U.S. plan. It will be more symbolic of co-operation the minority government is trying to build with opposition parties.
Martin dismissed the significance of the vote, saying he had already shown support for a Commons debate on the issue.
"If you take a look at my own speech in the House on that issue, I essentially said that . . . we're very open to debate," Martin said before a meeting in his Parliament Hill office with the prime minister of Burkina Faso.
Liberals were believed to be wary of a Commons vote because it would expose deep divisions toward Americans within the minority caucus and present an opportunity for more MPs to vent anti-Americanisms that could damage relations with the United States.
A few weeks ago, Defence Minister Bill Graham indicated that a vote was unlikely because the federal government retained sole authority for national defence and treaties with other countries.
However, sources in two parties said Sunday that Martin appears to have come around to the idea of a vote after a week of negotiations with Conservatives, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP.
-------- ukraine
Ukraine Markets Chernobyl Ghost City Tour
Kiev, Ukraine (UPI)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-civil-04v.html
Cash-strapped Ukraine is generating foreign currency reserves by commercializing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster as a tourist site.
In the evening of April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 exploded in the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Guardian reported Monday. Estimates of fatalities from the fallout reach as high as 15,000.
Eventually, Soviet authorities sent 1,200 buses to evacuate 48,000 of the nearby villagers and erected a makeshift cordon around the power plant complex.
Now, however, tourists can pay $250 per person for an all-inclusive, day long bus tour of the catastrophe, about 40 miles north of picturesque Kiev.
About 90 tons of radioactive waste lies under the vast concrete that now covers the destroyed reactor.
Paradoxically, much of the land around Chernobyl is lush: Most of it looks more like a nature sanctuary, with abundant forests, lush grass and herds of a rare species of wild horse.
The lack of human activity has allowed wolves, foxes, wild boar and myriad other species to flourish.
-------- u.n.
If You Want to Test a Nuke, Vienna's Watching
(Reuters)
By Julia Damianova
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UJFWO0HM5TAJWCRBAEOCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6529537 VIENNA, Austria - Whether big or small, high in the sky or deep in the ground, if you test a nuclear bomb, someone in the Austrian capital will find out.
Austria is one of Europe's most anti-nuclear countries. So it makes sense that two organizations charged with keeping the world free of atomic weapons are based here -- the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).
Both have their headquarters in the fortress-like Vienna International Center that overlooks the peaceful Danube river.
"We would be able to detect (any nuclear test) with possibly a 98 percent guarantee," CTBTO spokeswoman Daniela Rozgonova told journalists during an agency field exercise in Slovakia.
The test-ban treaty was opened for signing in 1996. Since then, the CTBTO has been working furiously to cover the planet with monitoring stations so that by the time the treaty comes into force, the entire world will be under its gaze.
For example, Rozgonova said the CTBTO was in a position to know a lot about last month's mysterious blast in North Korea, an explosion that some feared may have been the first nuclear test carried out by the reclusive Stalinist state.
But any analysis the CTBTO had about North Korea would be kept a secret and passed on to the 173 CTBTO member states to decide what to do with information they receive from the agency.
"It is the member states who ... decide what the data means. We do the technical analysis," she said.
NEVER UNDER BUSH
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban treaty prohibits any civilian or military nuclear explosions and was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 10 1996. So far, 119 of the 173 signatories have ratified it.
Although the CTBTO is clearly capable of monitoring the planet to make sure no one conducts a secret nuclear test, its hands are tied by the fact that the treaty has yet to come into force.
Some diplomats in Vienna question if it will ever become a binding international treaty. To come into force, the 44 states which participated in the 1996 conference where the pact was agreed must ratify it.
So far, 33 of the 44 have ratified it; 11 -- including the United States, Iran, Israel and China -- have not. India, Pakistan and North Korea are among those which have yet to either sign or ratify the pact.
Several Western diplomats in Vienna said the administration of President Bush was vehemently opposed to the test-ban treaty and would like to see it destroyed.
"The Bush administration will never sign on to anything that would tie its hands in the event of a military conflict," a diplomat familiar with U.S. thinking told Reuters.
As a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Washington agreed to gradually dispose of its nuclear arsenal. Rather than disarm, it has expressed interest in developing so-called "mini-nukes" -- smaller-scale atomic bombs.
Some diplomats said that the concept of sharing classified seismological data with other CTBTO member states which might be considered enemies was anathema to Washington.
CTBTO spokeswoman Rozgonova said she had no choice to believe that the treaty would someday become binding.
"We have to be optimistic about the treaty coming into force," she said.
READY FOR A BLAST
While waiting for that to happen, the CTBTO busies itself with setting up a complex network of 321 monitoring stations and 16 laboratories. Half of the monitoring stations are up and running.
Although the agency's monitoring network is not yet complete, the CTBTO already covers a large part of the globe. It also possesses powerful detection equipment.
In 2002, the organization's experts detonated 12.5 tons of chemical explosive at a depth of 656 feet in the former Soviet nuclear test site Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.
This was recorded by CTBTO's monitors as far away as Norway, thousands of miles from the explosion site.
"One kiloton is the smallest achievable nuclear bomb by countries still on their way to create their own nuclear weapon," CTBTO scientist Patrick Dewez told Reuters.
A kiloton is the explosive equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.
Although the quantity detonated during the Semipalatinsk test was only about 1 percent of the size of a standard nuclear bomb, the Kazakhstan experiment proved that the CTBTO possesses the technical capability to detect all kinds of explosive activities around the globe.
On-site inspections are another important part of CTBTO work. If a member state asked it to investigate a suspected nuclear test in another country, it would send inspectors there.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
Wash. Voters to Wrestle With Waste Measure
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste-Proposition.html
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- Supporters call an initiative on the Washington state ballot a no-brainer: bar the federal government from shipping nuclear waste to the Hanford nuclear site until all the existing waste there is cleaned up.
But opponents of Initiative 297 argue that interfering with the Energy Department's national plan for nuclear waste disposal could spell doom, especially if other states follow Washington's lead and ban Hanford waste.
The 586-square-mile facility in south-central Washington, which was created decades ago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, remains the most contaminated site in the nation.
At issue is the federal government's plans for disposing of waste from Cold War-era nuclear weapons production nationwide. The Energy Department chose Hanford to dispose of some mildly radioactive waste and mixed low-level waste.
Initiative 297 would block the Energy Department from sending more waste to Hanford until the existing waste at the site is cleaned up. A citizens' petition sent the initiative to the Legislature early this year. Lawmakers declined to act on it, sending the measure to the ballot.
Gerald Pollet, executive director of the Hanford watchdog group Heart of America Northwest and sponsor of the initiative, said voters would be foolhardy not to adopt a standard to protect themselves from more contamination at Hanford.
``Don't add more waste to a site that has leaking landfills or hazardous waste that isn't stored in compliance with existing standards,'' Pollet said.
The Energy Department has taken no position on the initiative.
Hanford already is home to 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid, sludge and saltcake stored in 177 underground tanks. The Energy Department aims to bury much of that waste in a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Another 75,000 55-gallon drums of less hazardous waste also are buried at Hanford.
``It's clear that Hanford has a role to play in accepting a small volume of waste so that other DOE sites can close, but at the same time, Hanford stands to benefit tenfold by shipping all of its high-level waste, spent fuel and plutonium waste to other repositories,'' said Colleen French, spokeswoman for the Energy Department's Richland office.
Heart of America Northwest has argued that the Energy Department's waste disposal plan will amount to 70,000 truckloads of waste entering the state. The Energy Department estimated about 5,800 truckloads of waste would enter the state.
The Energy Department also has pledged to cap the amount of additional low-level and mixed low-level waste that could be brought into the state and disposed of at Hanford at about 107,000 cubic yards.
Opponents argue the waste shipments to Hanford amount to rolling dirty bombs. On a recent sunny morning, two initiative supporters argued against the Energy Department's plans beside a bright-yellow, 15-foot balloon meant to represent the barrels of radioactive waste that could travel cross-country by truck.
``We're not saying not in my backyard,'' said Robert Pregulman, executive director of the Washington Public Interest Research Group. ``We're just saying not in my backyard until you clean my backyard first.''
Other states have battled the federal government's program for disposing of nuclear waste.
For years, Nevada has been fighting plans to build a national waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas that would hold all the nation's high-level waste. And in New Mexico, where the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad will take Hanford's hazardous trash, the federal government agreed at the urging of state officials not to send high-level waste there.
On the Net:
Hanford: http://www.hanford.gov
Heart of America Northwest: http://www.heartofamericanorthwest.org
--------
Effect of Waste Vote, Not Outcome, Is at Issue
October 18, 2004
By ELI SANDERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/national/18waste.html
SEATTLE, Oct. 17 - There is little doubt that Washington voters will approve a ballot question in November to tell the federal government not to truck more radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear reservation, which is already an environmental mess.
The question is what happens when the measure passes.
Proponents hope the referendum, known as Initiative 297, will block the government's plans to send the waste to Hanford. But opponents, including Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington, contend the measure will backfire. They say Hanford's cleanup, which until recently has had a history of failures, could be delayed if other states are inspired to hold their own votes. Some waste from Hanford is eventually to be moved to other states.
Opponents also say that a multistate response could thwart the government's plan to create a national repository of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which would eventually hold some of Hanford's material.
The odds against the initiative's supporters are long. The federal government has broad powers to transport and dispose of the dangerous waste generated in the building of the nation's nuclear arsenal, making challenges like Washington's difficult to uphold.
"It's a very tough thing to try to prevail on," said Joe Egan, a Virginia lawyer who specializes in nuclear environmental litigation and is not involved in the Washington effort. But Mr. Egan said the drafters of the initiative had taken an unusual approach, which could help them.
Hanford is a 586-square-mile complex in southeastern Washington that in its heyday busily pumped out plutonium for the nation's nuclear bombs. The largest of its nuclear reactors was shuttered in 1986, and the ensuing cleanup has been under way for more than a decade. It will cost $2 billion this year alone. But it is far from finished, and watchdog groups complain of lost plutonium in the soil and millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater leaking toward the Columbia River.
Two polls, one taken in the spring by backers of the measure and a more recent one by an independent polling firm, both suggest the initiative will pass by a large margin.
Rather than challenging the right of the federal government to dispose of the waste in a place of its choosing, Initiative 297 focuses on federal laws that give states the right to prevent more waste from being delivered to a site that is already a danger to the environment. Proponents of the measure say Hanford, a Superfund site where even the Energy Department admits cleanup efforts were failing until recently, certainly qualifies on this score.
"You cannot add more waste to a Superfund site where the landfills are leaking and the waste already there is not in compliance with federal waste standards," said Gerald M. Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, which is backing the initiative effort.
The impetus for the initiative, Mr. Pollet said, was a decision in 2000 by the Energy Department to begin sending waste from around the country to Hanford, adding to the huge amount of waste already there: 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel, 18 tons of plutonium, and 50 million gallons of liquid waste stored in 177 underground tanks. Mr. Pollet said the decision opened Hanford to about 70,000 new truckloads of waste. The department defends the plan, saying that only 5,800 loads will come and that Hanford is not the mess it once was.
"Over the past four years we've made more progress on Hanford cleanup than we have at any other time in our history," Colleen French, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said. "Even our toughest critics acknowledge that the Hanford cleanup is making more progress."
Opponents of the measure argue that the initiative could impede that progress. "If Washington State were to take this position of not wanting to ship any waste in, it doesn't take much of a stretch to figure out that other states will want to do this, too," Representative Hastings said. "I think that is a very bad tradeoff."
Proponents dismiss that argument as a red herring, saying the conditions at Hanford are unique and make the initiative unlikely to be replicated in a way that would strand waste at Hanford.
Mr. Egan, the nuclear environmental litigation expert, said he did not think things would ever get far enough to test which side is correct.
"I don't believe that it will succeed legally," he said. "So I don't see it as much of a threat on that ground."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
New Afghan Army a Match for Taliban, U.S. Says
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-afghan-army.html
KABUL (Reuters) - The new Afghan army is winning the support of the population and is capable of tackling a lingering insurgency by remnants of the ousted Taliban regime, the U.S. general in charge of its training said Monday.
Major General Craig Weston, commander of the U.S. Office of Military Co-operation - Afghanistan (OMC-A), told a news conference in the capital that the 17,000-strong force was winning hearts and minds and the fight against the Taliban.
He said commanders of the U.S.-led coalition overseeing the formation of the new Afghan National Army (ANA) were very pleased with the performance of the force during the presidential election on Oct. 9, which passed without any major security incidents despite threats by the Taliban to disrupt the poll.
Over 1,000 people have been killed this year in attacks by the Taliban, although their tactics have been reduced to planting roadside bombs or sporadic rocket and mortar attacks.
``Together we inflicted a strategic defeat to the Taliban, al Qaeda and the other enemies of freedom,'' Weston said. ``The Afghan people should be rightfully proud of the green berets of their new national army, who helped make this election so successful.''
But there is no timetable to reduce or withdraw foreign forces in Afghanistan and hand over operations entirely to the ANA.
Some 18,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban insurgency with a further 9,000 NATO-led troops providing security in the capital and relatively peaceful northern areas. The Afghan army is being rebuilt from scratch in the aftermath of the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban and is expected to grow to a planned 70,000 strong force by 2007.
Nearly three decades of conflict had reduced much of the Afghan army to a ill-disciplined rabble, and the central government has had little sway over the sizeable militias formed by regional commanders and warlords -- who depend on ethnic loyalties and in some cases money from drug running.
But a program to disarm the militias and form a national, unified army has so far proved a success. Some 23,000 militia fighters have been disarmed and more than 2,800 heavy weapons -- two-thirds of those estimated to be in the country -- are now under the control of Afghan army forces.
``It is an army that is growing and maturing rapidly,'' Weston said, adding that care was being taken to ensure the make-up of new units reflected the ethnic diversity of the country.
``When you see the green berets of the ANA, you see a multi-ethnic, skilled, disciplined professional force that has come to be respected by the Afghan people and viewed by them as a symbol of national unity,'' Weston said.
-------- africa
Sudan's Darfur 'safer than Iraq'
BBC
18 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3752824.stm
Sudan's government has said it has handled the Darfur crisis better than the United States has dealt with Iraq.
Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismael told the BBC that US leaders were trying to use Darfur "immorally" ahead of next month's presidential elections.
He was speaking after a meeting of regional leaders in Libya, at which Sudan hinted it may agree to Darfur having more control over its affairs.
Some 70,000 people have died in Darfur, in what the US says is a "genocide".
Pro-government Arab militias have forced some 1.5 million black African farmers and their families from their homes, after two rebel groups took up arms in February 2003.
'African solution'
Mr Ismael said the international community should leave the complex ethnic politics of Darfur alone.
"This is an African problem - it needs an African solution," he said.
The African Union hopes to have a 4,500-strong force in place by the end of November, but a lack of funds has delayed the deployment of troops.
About 300 armed Nigerian and Rwandan troops are currently in place.
The United Nations has threatened to impose sanctions on Sudan unless it stops the violence.
Mr Ismael said although the US has deployed more troops and advanced military hardware to Iraq, it has still not been able to disarm dissident forces there.
Credible estimates say that some 14,000 people have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion last year.
Sudan has sent thousands of extra policemen to Darfur but the UN says that attacks on refugees have continued.
Those who have fled their homes say that the security forces worked with the Janjaweed militias to force them from their homes but Sudan has always denied arming the Arab militias.
Humanitarian disaster
The fighting began more than a year ago when rebel groups began attacking government targets, complaining that the region was being neglected by the central government and that the authorities were oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs.
The rebellion sparked a crackdown on the civilian population by regular troops and militia called Janjaweed, leading to what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
At the summit in Libya, several delegates opposed the idea of sanctions.
Egyptian presidential spokesman Maged Abdel Fattah said that instead of putting pressure on Sudan or threatening sanctions, "we should all try to help Sudan to implement its obligations in accordance with resolutions".
The BBC's Mike Donkin in Tripoli says the meeting, on the face of it, produced real signs of movement to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
The summit also gave its backing to peace talks between Khartoum and rebels based in Darfur, which are due to resume on 21 October.
The talks were held late at night, after the leaders had broken their daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Journalists were barred from the meeting, which was convened and chaired by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, clad in brightly-coloured African robes.
-------- arms
Turkish FM denies plan to buy tanks from Germany: report
BERLIN (AFP)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041018135430.bc8lfz4y.html
Turkey is not currently planning to buy tanks from Germany, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has told a German newspaper, dismissing earlier press reports.
Gul, on a two-day visit to Germany, denied a report in Der Spiegel magazine that Turkey was interested in buying 350 second-hand Leopard II tanks from Germany.
The deal was "not the order of the day", Gul told the Handelsblatt newspaper, according to an advance extract of its Tuesday edition.
Asked whether Turkey planned to buy the heavy battle tanks in the next year, Gul replied: "I cannot say anything about that for now."
Reports in Germany last week said the sale of the Leopard II tanks was expected to be pushed through if European Union leaders decide at a summit in December that Turkey has undertaken enough democratic reforms to begin EU membership talks.
Gul was meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer later on Monday to discuss Turkey's hopes of being accepted for talks. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has already said he will back Turkey's cause.
Despite undergoing a programme of reforms, Turkey still "had a few problems", Gul said. "But the most important thing is that we resolve to deal with these problems or other setbacks," he told Handelsblatt.
-------- britain
Britain Denies Troops Plan to Help Bush
October 18, 2004
By ED JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LONDON (AP) -- The British government Monday rejected claims it was planning to put some of its troops under U.S. command as a political show of support for President Bush ahead of the presidential election.
According to widespread media reports, Britain is considering redeploying a reserve battalion of some 650 soldiers to Baghdad to back up Americans planning a major offensive against insurgents in Fallujah.
Some opposition lawmakers have accused the government of pandering to Washington rather than basing decisions on military needs.
Britain's Ministry of Defense has confirmed that U.S. commanders have asked for British troops to be repositioned, but it stressed that no decision has yet been made. Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon was scheduled to make a statement to the House of Commons on the subject later Monday.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissed the claims as "complete nonsense from the beginning, through the middle, to the end."
Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram insisted British troops will not be used as "political playthings."
"Any decision on the deployment of British troops in Iraq or anywhere else will be based on operational criteria," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
But opposition Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said he could not see why the U.S. military, which has 130,000 troops in Iraq, might need more support from 650 British soldiers.
"It is hard to see why that constitutes a crucial contribution in the American point of view," he told BBC radio, and he said Britain should be considering withdrawing from Iraq. "This, far from being an exit strategy, runs the risk of being an ensnarement strategy that drags Britain further into the mire."
Several newspapers have reported that Britain is considering sending its reserve force - the First Battalion Black Watch - from the southern port city of Basra to Baghdad to free up American troops to participate in an expected all-out offensive on Fallujah, a city 40 miles west of the capital that is considered the toughest stronghold of insurgents.
A senior military official told The Associated Press that Britain had no plans to do so.
"No plans have been made for the First Battalion Black Watch to go to Baghdad or Fallujah," said Maj. Charlie Mayo, a British military spokesman in Basra.
However, a military source said contingency plans were in place to send British troops to the U.S.-controlled sector and that discussions about coalition troop deployments were ongoing with Iraqi and U.S. officials.
Sending British soldiers further north into the U.S.-controlled sector, where there are more attacks by insurgents, carries a risk of higher casualties and would be politically sensitive for Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Are we seriously expected to believe that with 130,000 soldiers in Iraq that the Americans, for military reasons, need 650 Black Watch to protect their backs in Iraq while they storm Fallujah?" Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond told the BBC. "I don't want to see a single Black Watch soldier sacrificed and jeopardized for a political gesture from Tony Blair to George W. Bush."
Cabinet minister Alan Milburn denied that "some sort of tawdry political deal" was being done.
"All of these decisions are taken on an operational basis. They are done in full consultation with the people on the ground," he said.
U.S. forces began bombing targets in Fallujah on Thursday after peace talks between Iraqi officials and city leaders broke down. The Iraqi government has demanded city officials hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed responsible for suicide bombings and beheading foreign hostages, including Americans.
U.S. officials indicated the bombing was not a prelude to a major offensive into the city that they have said they might launch sometime this fall. Negotiations aimed at restoring government control in Fallujah without requiring a ground assault have faltered.
--------
No. 10 did not tell truth about Iraq, says diplomat who quit
independent.co.uk
By Anne Penketh
18 October 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=573224
A high-flying diplomat who helped frame the Government arguments that laid the groundwork for the Iraq war, has resigned because Downing Street "did not tell the whole truth" about the Iraqi threat.
Carne Ross, a former first secretary to Britain's UN mission between 1998 and mid-2002 in charge of Iraq issues, had resigned a month ago just as he was about to take up a senior post in London.
Asked about his reasons, 38-year-old Mr Ross told The Independent yesterday: "I had lost trust in a Government that I believe did not tell the whole truth about the alleged threat posed by Iraq before the war."
He also highlighted the Government's failure to "fully pursue available alternatives to invasion", a reference to the option of allowing the UN weapons inspections to continue. But the diplomat, who had taken a year's sabbatical before going on to serve until last month as chief strategist to the UN mission in Kosovo, refused to comment further.
Mr Ross is the second senior Iraq expert from the Foreign Office to resign over the war. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a deputy head in the legal department, left in March 2003. Other prominent officials including the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, have said the war was illegal. Mr Ross's position reflects the unease about the prosecution of the war among those who knew there was no new evidence that Saddam Hussein represented a direct threat to Britain.
The Butler report into the intelligence that led to the war and the conclusions of the Iraq Survey Group, which reported 10 days ago that there had been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has heightened the sense of unease.
Mr Ross's boss, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who served the Government loyally at the United Nations before becoming Britain's senior envoy to Iraq, has said the inspectors should have been allowed to complete their work. Sir Jeremy has retired from the diplomatic service.
-------- business
Libyan mustard gas plant may be converted into pharmaceuticals factory
THE HAGUE (AFP)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041018144215.0t69ywlu.html
A mustard gas factory in Libya may be converted into a pharmaceutical plant producing low-priced vaccines and medicines to treat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Monday.
The plan will go forward if members of the OPCW approve an amendment to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which called for chemical weapons sites to be destroyed or converted to peaceful purposes by the end of 2003.
Libya, with the support of the United States and 16 other OPCW members, sought the amendment early this month that would allow it to convert the factory in Rabta, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Tripoli, into a pharmaceuticals factory to produce the drugs for developing countries. The Rabta plant, which produced around 100 tonnes of sulphur mustard gas and other neurotoxic agents in the 1980s, was closed in 1990 under pressure from the United States and other countries.
Libya decided on January 6 to adhere to the Chemical Weapons Convention after announcing the previous month that it was renouncing its unconventional weapons programs.
--------
U.S. Buyers of Hussein's Oil Acted to Assist Iraq
Oct 18, 2004
Los Angeles Times
By T. Christian Miller
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=3&u=/latimests/20041018/ts_latimes/usbuyersofhusseinsoilactedtoassistiraq
WASHINGTON - A month before the Persian Gulf War began in 1991, with an attack by the U.S.-led coalition imminent, famed Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt rushed his corporate jet to Baghdad to rescue 21 Americans being held hostage by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
It was a personal triumph for Wyatt, who had clashed with the U.S. government over the private rescue mission, and a political one for Hussein, who was trying to convince the world that he remained open to negotiation after his invasion of Kuwait.
This month, Wyatt was one of three Americans whose names surfaced in a CIA report listing the people and companies whom Hussein allegedly awarded lucrative vouchers to buy oil in the decade that followed his defeat in 1991.
In the interim, Wyatt came to be a central figure in a small, loosely knit group of Americans who supported policies and activities potentially beneficial to Hussein even as they benefited from the dictator's oil resources, U.S. officials, oil analysts and personal acquaintances said.
Their story provides a revealing glimpse at the politics of oil and the people behind it, operating in a world that mixed diplomacy, intrigue and multimillion-dollar oil deals.
The men, involved in Iraq through professional and personal relationships that in some cases stretched back decades, at times engaged in a secretive campaign of private diplomacy, offering themselves as a communications back channel between Hussein and at least two U.S. administrations, the sources said.
At least one of the men attempted to broker a peace deal between the U.S. and Iraq in a last-ditch effort to avoid war. Others waged campaigns to put an end to United Nations sanctions against Iraq, portraying their efforts as humanitarian gestures to help the Iraqi people.
At the same time, all were donating to U.S. political campaigns. Since 1991, Wyatt and his wife, Lynn, for instance, have given more than $700,000 to federal campaign and political organizations, most to Democrats and most after Wyatt and his firm began to buy oil from Iraq in 1997, according to records maintained by the Campaign Finance Analysis Project.
The other Americans named in the CIA report, Virginia oil trader Samir "Sam" Vincent and Michigan real estate developer Shakir Al Khafaji, helped sponsor high-level trips to Iraq during the 1990s with influential U.S. congressmen and brought high-ranking Iraqi religious leaders to the United States.
Friends said the men were trying to bring attention to the suffering of ordinary Iraqis under the sanctions, which had squeezed food and medical shipments to the nation's 26 million people.
Wyatt and a former business associate, David Chalmers, whose company was mentioned in the CIA report, were primarily interested in Iraq for business reasons, friends and analysts said. They bought Iraqi oil in a market that came to be characterized by shadowy middlemen and kickbacks, backroom deals and high-stakes showdowns.
Wyatt said through a spokesman last week that all his transactions in Iraq complied with applicable laws. Chalmers, Vincent and Khafaji did not respond to attempts to contact them or their companies.
None of the men has been accused of breaking the law by trading oil with Hussein, a process overseen by the U.N. between 1996 and 2003 as part of its oil-for-food program.
Many companies, including firms run by Wyatt, Vincent and Chalmers, were on a list approved by the U.N. to buy oil from Iraq under the program, which was designed to use the proceeds from oil sales to provide humanitarian aid for the Iraqi people.
The legality of oil sales to individuals, however, is suspect, congressional investigators said. Hussein abused the U.N. program by personally issuing oil vouchers to high-ranking political figures worldwide to win friends and wage a propaganda war to lift the sanctions, according to the CIA report by special weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer.
Hussein's vouchers entitled the bearers to a certain quantity of oil. The holders could then sell their coupons to middlemen, who would in turn sell the oil to companies. Sometimes the vouchers were gifts; sometimes they were contracts to buy oil at a specific price.
Such vouchers are at the heart of what has become one of the gravest corruption scandals at the United Nations since its founding in 1945. The oil-for-food program generated an estimated $67 billion legally and $11 billion illegally, with top U.N. officials and officials from China to France to Russia implicated as having received such vouchers.
Wyatt, Khafaji and Vincent are the only Americans on the list of recipients, which was obtained from records kept by Iraq's State Oil Ministry and recovered by U.S. troops. Five U.S. companies were also named: Chevron-Texaco, Exxon Mobil, Wyatt's Coastal Corp., Vincent's Phoenix International, and Chalmers' Bay Oil.
There are nine investigations into various aspects of the scandal. They include a federal investigation in New York that has subpoenaed records from El Paso Corp., which acquired Wyatt's old company, Coastal Corp.; Chevron-Texaco and Exxon Mobil. All have said their oil purchases were legal.
Treasury officials recently announced that they were investigating the possibility that U.S.-based sanctions against trade in Iraq had been violated.
In 1990, Vincent was among a small group of businessmen who fled Iraq by taxi after Hussein invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2.
Unlike the others, however, the Iraqi-born Vincent, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had a mission, according to friends and former U.S. officials: He was carrying a last-minute peace proposal to the Bush administration from Hussein, prepared by a longtime friend, Nizar Hamdoon, the former Iraqi ambassador to the U.S.
Immediately upon his return to the U.S., Vincent contacted Col. Carl Bernard, a decorated war hero with connections at the White House. The plan was reviewed by national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who rejected it, Bernard said.
By that time, however, Vincent's role had been made clear to the U.S. government:
"Vincent was an asset that we needed and could have used but didn't," Bernard recalled of the initiative.
A few months later, with Hussein still holding hostages seized after the start of the invasion, a top aide to Rep. Charles Wilson, a Texas Democrat, asked Vincent to intervene.
The aide, Charlie Schnabel, was a squash partner of Vincent, a former Iraqi Olympic athlete. Vincent, who had gone to high school with the Iraqi oil minister and other top Iraqi officials, agreed. After speaking with top-ranking Iraqi officials, he told Schnabel that Hussein, who was trying to show the world he would cooperate, had agreed to free some of the hostages.
Schnabel then turned to Wyatt, an old acquaintance and a maverick even by the iconoclastic standards of independent Texas oilmen. Wyatt, the head of Coastal Corp., noted for his corporate takeovers and dealings with rogue nations, had long done business in Iraq.
In fact, one of Coastal's principal refineries, in Aruba, was especially configured to handle the high-sulfur Iraqi oil. Wyatt's financial success depended in part on his ability to procure Iraqi crude oil, experts said.
Wyatt volunteered the use of his plane for the mission and accompanied Vincent on the trip.
"He has a much stronger social conscience than he wants people to think," said Barbara Shook, who has covered Wyatt as a journalist for more than two decades, most recently as the Houston bureau chief for the Energy Intelligence Group. "I never sensed that he was pro-Saddam. He was pro-Iraqi people."
Although their efforts failed to stop the war, Wyatt and Vincent pressed ahead with their opposition to U.S. policies in Iraq and to the U.N. sanctions.
With malnutrition and child mortality rates skyrocketing, Hussein agreed to allow the U.N. to carry out its oil-for-food program. Started in late 1996, it authorized contracts between the Iraqi government and oil companies for the purchase of Iraqi oil. Money from the sales was then deposited in a U.N. account and used to buy humanitarian goods.
The first company to win approval to buy Iraqi oil was Wyatt's company, Coastal, according to the records contained in Duelfer's report. Vincent's company, Phoenix, followed soon after. Though Duelfer's public report did not name the U.S. companies and individuals involved, citing privacy concerns, congressional sources provided the names to The Times.
From 1996 until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Wyatt, Vincent or their firms won the right to ship millions of barrels of oil from Iraq. Wyatt or his company pumped 71.8 million barrels of oil under the voucher program at a profit of $22.8 million. Vincent and his firm pumped 7.9 million barrels of oil and made a profit of $3.5 million, the report said.
Wyatt stepped down as head of Coastal in 1997, although he remained a consultant. In his final speech as head of the company he founded, Wyatt used the occasion to denounce unilateral sanctions as harmful to U.S. business - though he did not mention Iraq by name.
After Wyatt stepped down as chairman, the pace of the Wyatt family political donations more than doubled to about $67,200 per year, according to campaign finance records.
The Wyatts gave to both top Republicans and Democrats, including President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Democratic side and Sen. John McCain and Rep. Tom Delay on the Republican side. About 75% flowed to the Democrats. None went to the Bush family, whom Wyatt disliked, analysts said.
"His differences with both Bushes are well established," one industry analyst said.
Coastal Corp., meanwhile, donated $2.5 million to a variety of political action committees and political organizations between 1991 and 2000, before the company was sold to El Paso, the records showed.
Bob Baer, a former CIA officer, said that his Iraqi sources told him that Wyatt had represented himself as a way to send a message to President Clinton.
Vincent worked to end sanctions when he helped to bring a trio of Iraqi religious leaders to meet with top U.S. church leaders and others in 1991. A longtime acquaintance said Vincent worked directly with the Hussein government to arrange the trip, which was opposed by the U.S. government.
The three Iraqis, a Christian, a Sunni Muslim and a Shiite Muslim, met with former President Carter, Cardinal John O'Connor and the Rev. Billy Graham in an effort to convince them to appeal for ending the sanctions, the acquaintance said.
The acquaintance described Vincent's motives as humanitarian, though he acknowledged that Vincent's efforts benefited Phoenix International. The source dismissed any suggestion that Vincent was working for Hussein.
"This guy is a true-blue American who is also a business guy," the acquaintance said. "[The Iraqis] appreciated what he was doing. If they had a certain number of allocations to give out, they would direct them to the people who were pulling for them. I think it was simple as that."
Scott Ritter, a former weapons inspector, met Khafaji after briefing a group of U.S. congressmen in Washington in April 2000.
Khafaji had grown up in Iraq in a politically well-connected family, moving to America to establish a real estate business that was highly profitable, he told Ritter.
He said he wanted to help Ritter, who was trying to raise funds for a documentary to show how the inspection effort had successfully disarmed Hussein - a controversial proposition then, but one which has since been proven correct.
Khafaji gave Ritter $400,000 between August 2000 and June 2001 to make the film, Ritter said. The next month, Khafaji showed up on the list of oil voucher recipients for the first time, selling a little more than 2 million barrels of oil for a profit of nearly $1 million, according to Duelfer's report.
Khafaji sold his oil through a middleman to Bay Oil, Chalmers' company, according to a joint investigation by the Financial Times newspaper and an Italian business journal. The report could not be independently confirmed.
Ritter said Khafaji exercised no editorial control over the documentary and that Khafaji had personally assured him that the money did not come from Hussein, but Ritter acknowledged the possibility that he was a "useful idiot."
"The regime felt they needed a movie like the one I made to be made. They had no input. I told the Iraqi government, 'The truth is your friend,' " Ritter said. "Shakir facilitated the truth being told. I view him as an American patriot."
In September 2002, as Congress prepared to vote on whether to authorize war in Iraq, Khafaji helped arrange a trip to Iraq by Democratic Reps. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, Calif., Jim McDermott of Washington state and David E. Bonior of Michigan, who is no longer in office.
Republicans accused the three Democrats of handing a public relations victory to Hussein. The three called on Hussein to admit weapons inspectors to clear up doubts over his arms program.
In a statement, Thompson said he had had no contact with Khafaji since the trip. McDermott, who received a one-time donation of $5,000 from Khafaji after the trip, returned the money upon learning of the possible links between Khafaji and the oil-for-food corruption, an aide said.
Khafaji's final attempt to stop the growing threat of war in Iraq came in January 2003, as he and Ritter tried to arrange a trip to Baghdad by a group of Nobel Peace Prize winners, Ritter said.
This time, with an attack by another U.S.-led coalition imminent, the plan fell apart.
American and British troops invaded two months later.
-------- iraq
U.S. asks Britain to move troops
October 18, 2004
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041018-010545-8113r.htm
LONDON - U.S. commanders have asked Britain to shift 650 crack troops from southern Iraq to more dangerous positions near Baghdad, freeing American troops for an anticipated large-scale assault on the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah, officials said.
Defense Ministry officials said the government had not made a decision on the request, which will be announced to the House of Commons by British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon today, but other sources said the appeal would be "very difficult to refuse."
U.S. forces continued to hammer Fallujah yesterday with missile and tank fire, as they have done since city leaders late last week turned down a demand from Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that they turn over terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Witnesses reported heavy fighting between U.S. and rebel forces on the eastern and southern edges of the city with clashes blocking the main road to Baghdad, 40 miles to the east.
The Associated Press said that a Humvee was seen burning in the eastern edge of the city and that hospital officials reported three civilians killed. There was no casualty report from the U.S. military.
The skirmishes were seen as preparatory to a much larger attack on the city, designed to re-establish government control over Fallujah, Ramadi and other rebel hotbeds ahead of elections scheduled for January.
Inside Fallujah, hundreds of rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns and assault rifles have taken up position along the main street awaiting the attack, an Iraqi reporter told The Washington Times.
Fighters are also stationed on the rooftops, and Abdullah Janabi, a leader of the rebel Islamic Council that controls the city, warned that any "invaders and infidels" would face imminent death, said reporter Aqil Jabbar.
The requested redeployment of British forces would free up the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 24th Marines to take part in the attack on Fallujah.
Britain's highly regarded Black Watch regiment would replace the Marines in the mainly Shi'ite city of Iskandariya, where the United States has a base, and the Sunni flash points of Mahmoudiya and Latifiya.
It was in Latifiya that Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad terror group is believed to have held and beheaded two American contractors and their British colleague Kenneth Bigley. Attackers killed nine Iraqi police recruits in the town yesterday as they returned from training in Jordan.
Mr. Hoon, when he briefs Parliament today, can expect a barrage of criticism from both the pro-war Conservatives and the smaller but growing anti-war Liberal Democrats.
The Conservatives' defense spokesman Nicholas Soames has already challenged the timing of the deployment, saying it looked like "a political gesture," and charged that the concept of peacekeeping was "alien" to the Americans.
Mr. Soames maintained that British forces would need to have a major say in how anti-terrorist operations were carried out or the deployment could prompt a backlash that would place British forces in severe and unnecessary danger.
"I can see politically why they want it, but militarily I don't get it," he said in a television interview last night.
Former top military officials also expressed reservations yesterday evening.
John Walker, a former chief of defense intelligence, said that by committing troops to flash points around Baghdad, Prime Minister Tony Blair risked creating a Vietnam-like spiral of involvement.
"This is the way that mission creep starts in a big way," he said. "You get deeper and deeper in."
British commanders in Basra said, according to the London Sunday Telegraph, that moving the Black Watch, the main reserve unit in the British sector, could leave their troops without reinforcement in the event of a new outbreak of fighting in the south.
The Telegraph also cited suggestions that the United States would like to see its allies sharing more of the casualties in Iraq.
"There is a perception out there that this is an American war and only our soldiers are being killed. If the British re-deploying outside their current theater of operations helps dispel that perception, then that's a useful byproduct," a senior U.S. officer in Baghdad told the paper.
Robin Cook, who resigned as foreign secretary just before the war, said British soldiers would lose the respect of Iraqis if they were forced to adopt American tactics.
"For a year, Britain has been trying in vain to persuade U.S. forces to show the same restraint as our troops, who have won a lot of local goodwill as a result," he told the London Sunday Times.
"The real risk of sending a British battalion into the U.S. sector is that our troops could become associated in Iraqi minds with U.S. methods. The last time U.S. forces attacked Fallujah, they left 1,000 civilians dead and uproar across Iraq at their heavy-handed tactics."
But Labor member Bruce George, chairman of the parliamentary defense committee, said he would support the move "if it is militarily necessary."
"The alternative appears to be to carry on being largely reactive to insurgent attacks, bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. It appears that the U.S. wish to be more proactive and fight them on their adopted home territory in Fallujah."
--------
As U.S. Forces Pound Fallujah, Fighting Rages on City's Edge
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39798-2004Oct17?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- U.S. warplanes and tanks pummeled Fallujah on Sunday as intense battles raged on the outskirts of the insurgent-held city.
Separately, a car bomb exploded late Sunday in Baghdad's Jadriya district, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said, according to the Associated Press. The ministry said the blast was aimed at an Iraqi police patrol and caused an undetermined number of casualties. Al-Arabiya television reported, however, that the explosion targeted a cafe, killing seven people, including some police officers, and wounding about 20.
In Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum in the capital, three Iraqis were killed when a mortar round hit a soccer stadium where a weapons buyback program was underway. The attack occurred minutes before the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, was scheduled to arrive.
In Latifiyah, a city held by insurgents about 25 miles south of Baghdad, nine Iraqi police officers were killed in an ambush Saturday, the Associated Press reported. The officers were returning from a U.S.-sponsored training course in Jordan.
The escalation of fighting in Fallujah came as hundreds of insurgents arrived from other cities for a long-anticipated offensive by U.S. forces, according to witnesses. The city was nearly empty except for the insurgents, who prayed in the streets and celebrated iftar, the evening meal that marks the end of each day's fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The U.S. military has said its campaign in Fallujah is aimed at eradicating the network of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al Qaeda. In an allusion to Fallujah, Iraq's national security adviser, Qasim Dawood, warned that the use of Iraqi cities as havens for terrorists was "something the government cannot accept or tolerate."
Representatives of the insurgents suspended negotiations with the government last week, saying the demand to turn over Zarqawi was unreasonable because he was not in Fallujah. Although some representatives indicated Sunday that they were open to further talks, the violence continued.
Witnesses reported that U.S. forces fired on a vehicle carrying a family fleeing the fighting, killing all five passengers. No casualty figures were provided by the U.S. military. A doctor at the Fallujah hospital said three Iraqis were killed in the fighting.
Details of the attack on the Iraqi police officers in Latifiyah were sketchy. Insurgents have targeted hundreds of police and National Guard recruits as part of their strategy to undermine the U.S.-led occupation. American officials have called the training of the new Iraqi security forces key to stabilizing the country and facilitating the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The Iraqi government extended the weapons buyback program in Sadr City by two days in an effort to collect more arms. The program is part of a U.S. strategy to pacify areas held by insurgents in advance of nationwide elections planned for January. The agreement stipulates that loyalists of Moqtada Sadr, a rebellious Shiite cleric, exchange their weapons for cash and, in return, U.S. and Iraqi forces release detainees not convicted of any crimes. The program would be followed by as much as $500 million in reconstruction projects in the slum.
Despite the incentive, members of Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, have been slow to hand in weapons, U.S. military officials said.
Lt. Col. Florentino "Lopez" Carter, task force commander for the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, which patrols Sadr City, said in an interview that the effort had fallen "very short."
"I would say it certainly isn't a success," he said. "It doesn't send the right message that the Mahdi militia is focused on disarming and disbanding."
Carter said weapons have been handed over mostly by Sadr City residents not believed to be insurgents. "The only way we can measure it is based on number of weapons they hand over, and it just is nowhere near what we know to be the large weapons caches that they have," he said.
The U.S. military said in a statement Sunday that the program was "beginning to show a glimmer of success as more medium and heavy weapons are beginning to come in."
Carter said fighting in the slum has slowed considerably but that it was not clear whether the insurgents are using the pause to rearm and "re-seed" streets with roadside bombs, as occurred during a July cease-fire, or to disband.
Allawi was en route to the Sinaa soccer stadium when a mortar round struck it around 1 p.m., killing two Iraqi soldiers and an Iraqi civilian and wounding at least two others. It was unclear whether the attack was aimed at Allawi, who was scheduled to meet with members of Sadr's office and clerics at the stadium minutes later.
Iraqi guardsmen opened fire after the attack, shooting their automatic weapons randomly in response to reports of sniper fire. Two Iraqi police officers sitting in a nearby vehicle were wounded. Authorities immediately shut down the weapons handover program for the rest of the afternoon.
Allawi's convoy was diverted to a Sadr City government office building and his meetings with Sadr officials were postponed until later in the afternoon.
"I am very thrilled and pleased that things are moving in the right direction and arms are being surrendered to the Iraqi government," Allawi said after the meeting. "I call upon all Iraqi people throughout Iraq, whether in Basra, Nasiriyah, Fallujah, Ramadi or Mosul, to surrender their weapons and to respect the rule of law and to be part of the political process."
Large piles of weapons were visible at the stadium. They included hundreds of antitank mines, 14.5mm antiaircraft guns, 60mm, 82mm and 120mm mortar rounds, and artillery rounds.
Ahmed Saleh, 21, showed up at the stadium to turn in an old 60mm mortar launcher. Saleh, who said he was a member of the Mahdi Army, said the launcher was "not very good. I have another one at home that is much better."
Asked if he planned to hand it in, he said: "No, I'm going to keep it."
Special correspondents Bassam Sebti, Khalid Saffar and Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
--------
Iraqi PM to extend arms-for-cash scheme nationwide
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041018143150.pbgckhqm.html
Iraq's government will extend an arms-for-cash programme that started last week in a Baghdad Shiite slum across the country in a bid to rid the streets of weapons ahead of planned January elections, the prime minister said Monday.
"We will open this disarmament initiative to all the cities in the country, we will start with Basra," Iraq's second largest city in the south of the country, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in a speech to parliament.
A week-long weapons-for-cash scheme to disarm the militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City was a success and had already has been extended until Thursday, Allawi said.
"We collected weapons, explosives and mines that pose a threat to the security of the people and their safety and we are working to expand this process," he said.
"These steps are part of efforts to prepare for the elections. The government is determined to get rid of weapons in the cities and the neighbourhoods," Allawi told members of the National Council in a televised speech.
"We do not see any reason for having weapons in homes after today."
The prime minister called on people in Sadr City to come come forward with their remaining arms or face the consequences when the amnesty period expires.
"This is the last extension (of the deadline). The authorites will start a widescale search (of Sadr City) and they will confiscate any weapons they find and punish their owners in accordance with the law," he warned.
"This will happen also in other parts of Iraq."
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Iraqi Officials Plan to Extend Buying of Arms
October 18, 2004
The New York Times Company
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.and DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/international/middleeast/18iraq.html?pagewanted=1&ei=1&en=e269494f507805a1&ex=1099066572
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 17 - A government plan to entice Iraq's biggest Shiite militia to turn in its weapons in return for cash here has brought in enough arms in its first week that Iraqi officials extended the program on Sunday and said it might be spread to other cities.
The cooperation with the buyout has raised hopes that the militia's leader, Moktada al-Sadr, would continue his turn toward entering the country's democratic process. Underscoring the buyout's progress, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi ventured into the heart of Baghdad's hostile Shiite district to salute the militia, the Mahdi Army, for surrendering more than 1,000 of its heavy weapons in the past week. As Iraqi troops nearby assembled stacks of surrendered weapons at a soccer stadium in the district, Sadr City, Dr. Allawi said he was "thrilled" and urged more progress.
Dr. Allawi's aides said the buyout had been successful enough in Baghdad that it would be extended for two more days, until Tuesday, and that they were discussing widening the program to include other cities. A senior aide to Mr. Sadr said the militia would have no objection.
Iraqi and American officials contend that Mr. Sadr still has much of his arsenal. But American commanders echoed Dr. Allawi's encouragement on Sunday, though they emphasized that the militia must deliver far more weaponry. The military said that Mr. Sadr's militia had turned in about 700 rocket-propelled grenades and about 400 mortar shells, along with hundreds of lighter weapons, and that the Iraqi government had paid about $1.2 million in return.
Even as the disarmament appeared to gain momentum, insurgents continued attacks in Baghdad on Sunday. Before Dr. Allawi arrived at the stadium in Sadr City, mortar fire struck it, killing two people. And news agencies reported that a car bomb had exploded near a cafe, killing at least seven and wounding 20.
In a message posted Sunday on Islamic Web sites, Iraq's most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pledged his loyalty to Osama bin Laden and emphasized the need for unity against "the enemies of Islam."
Outside Falluja, American marines resumed fierce clashes with insurgents, continuing a military push that began on Friday and appeared to be laying the groundwork for an attempt to retake the city from insurgents. The military fired heavy artillery and tank-gun barrages and dropped guided bombs on militant safe houses and weapons caches, military officials said.
Despite the violence on Sunday, Dr. Allawi spoke enthusiastically of the progress in the weapons surrender program. "I am very thrilled and pleased that things are moving in the right direction and arms are being surrendered to the Iraqi government," he said after a meeting with Mr. Sadr's aides.
Later, the Iraqi official in charge of the buyout, Akeel al-Saffar, said in an interview that Mr. Sadr's aides "have cooperated with us" and that the buyback "has gone better than expected." Plans for similar buyouts elsewhere "are in the pipeline," he added.
Mr. Sadr is thought to have hundreds of loyalists across southern Iraq, in cities like Amara, Basra and Diwaniya. Iraqi officials have long worried that unless those groups also turn in their heavy weapons, they pose a serious threat to the nationwide elections scheduled for January.
In recent weeks, Mr. Sadr has been meeting with leaders from across the Iraqi political spectrum, telling them he is planning to transform his movement from an armed group into a democratic one. Many Iraqis, and the Americans especially, are skeptical of Mr. Sadr, given his record of breaking similar promises.
But circumstances for Mr. Sadr have changed in recent months, all of which may be nudging him into the political system. His militia has suffered a pounding at the hands of the Americans in Sadr City and Najaf. And the Americans and the Iraqi government have promised to embark on a campaign of house-to-house searches in the area to find whatever weapons Mr. Sadr does not turn over.
At the same time, Mr. Sadr has come under intense pressure from mainstream Shiite leaders, who see the elections in January as the clearest path to political power. Shiites comprise about 60 percent of the Iraqi population.
Mr. Sadr's own aides said he was moving in that direction. "We are part of the political process now," said Karim Bakhati, a representative of Mr. Sadr, after the meeting with Dr. Allawi at the weaponsfor-cash handover. "The Iraqi government wants to have such centers outside Baghdad, and we don't have any objections to that." American and Iraqi officials say they believe that Mr. Sadr is playing something of a double game: He may intend to make a foray into democratic politics, but he is trying to keep as much as of his militia as he can, if only because many of the country's largest political parties have their own armed groups as well.
The Americans said they were still worried about as many as 100 homemade bombs that are thought to be planted under the streets of Sadr City, a type of bomb that has killed and wounded dozens of American soldiers. American commanders said that only two such bombs had been turned in, and that it would be difficult or impossible to restart the American-financed reconstruction program, which employed 15,000 Iraqis until the fighting intensified in August, until the roadside bombs were unearthed.
Still, the American commanders said they were encouraged by the effort. "We're never going to get them to give up everything," a senior American military officer said. "But this is not a bad deal. It gets these weapons off the street and it helps us equip the new Iraqi security forces. I can't imagine it's not hurting the Mahdi militia in some way."
Under bleachers at one end of the stadium, Iraqi national guardsmen displayed weapons they said were turned in Sunday: Thick stacks of mortar rounds, hundreds of antitank weapons, and long guns they said were used to fire on American helicopters.
Whatever else it has accomplished, the deal struck by Mr. Sadr and the Iraqi government earlier this month has transformed the atmosphere in Sadr City. Since August, the area has been the scene of intense fighting and almost nightly air raids by American planes and jets. On Sunday, the streets were mostly quiet, and the tension in the area had receded significantly.
The public appeal of Mr. Sadr was driven home Sunday to Dr. Allawi. As the prime minister prepared to lave the soccer stadium, a crowd of Mr. Sadr's militiamen began to chant. "Long Live Moktada!" they shouted. "Long live Moktada!"
In Falluja on Sunday, American marines engaged in gun battles with insurgents at the outskirts of the town. The marines said that one of their patrols was attacked by a group of insurgents firing mortars, machine guns and grenade launchers, and that they returned fire with artillery, tanks and seven bombs dropped from the air. The marines said the insurgents, some of whom evidently survived the onslaught, piled their guns into a taxi and a pickup truck and drove to a mosque.
"Marines did not fire on the mosque," the statement said.
The patrols being carried out by the marines are intended to disrupt the insurgents and draw their fire. The operations, which began Friday, appear to be laying the groundwork for an offensive to recapture the city, which fell under the control of insurgents in April.
The insurgents are still very much in control of the city. One of them, Muhammad al-Mehimmadi, took a break from the fighting on Sunday and spoke with fervor about resisting an American-led assault.
"We are on the right side, and God is with us, and anyone who has God on his side never loses," Mr. Mehimmadi said. "The greatest evidence of that is what happened in April. Let the Americans do what they intend to do, and they will see wonders."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Falluja.
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Deadly mortar attack marks end to failed Mehdi Army weapons exchange
The NewStandard
October 18, 2004
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1126
Oct 18 - As the last day of a weapons exchange program in the Baghdad slum and Mehdi Army stronghold of Sadr City came to a close, a mortar attack killed a civilian and two Iraqi National Guard members. The seven-day weapons-for-money arrangement was negotiated between rebel Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Iraqi government. However, as with previous such schemes, the effectiveness of the latest effort is in doubt.
US and Iraqi officials had touted the plan as proof that tensions between US and Iraqi forces and the militia loyal to Al-Sadr were easing. However, reports suggested that the initiative, while serving as a source of cash for some residents in the poverty-stricken area, did not meet its intended goal of disarming the Mehdi Army.
"Our expectations had been that thousands of weapons would be handed in," Captain Brian O'Malley of the First Cavalry Division told Reuters. "We haven't seen that many," he added. Occupation authorities have estimated the size of the Mehdi militia at as many as 10,000 armed rebels.
O'Malley also conceded that many of the guns turned in are old or in bad shape, and he expressed doubts that the group had fully disarmed. Perhaps most ominous for occupation forces, the program reportedly recovered few heavy weapons and dreaded improvised explosive devices were recovered by the program.
On Sunday, the last day of the program, which had been extended from five to seven days, a mortar round fell near a stadium being used as an exchange site, killing three and wounding several civilians. It is unclear who launched the attack.
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Killing Drives Wedge Between Troops
October 18, 2004
Los Angeles Times
By Edmund Sanders and Suhail Ahmed
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes357.htm
AD DAWR, Iraq - Like most men from his impoverished Bedouin village, 17-year-old Falah Zaggam joined the Iraqi national guard for a job and steady paycheck.
Federico Merida, 21, was raising a family and working at a furniture business in North Carolina when his U.S. National Guard unit was sent to Iraq earlier this year.
Late one night last spring, the two guardsmen found themselves alone in a lookout tower at a military base here in Ad Dawr, near Tikrit in northern Iraq. They were supposed to be working together to ward off insurgents.
But before the shift ended, Merida shot the Iraqi to death and threw his body off the tower.
One bullet pierced Zaggam's palm, which was burned by the gun blast, indicating that his hand was raised against the muzzle in self-defense, his family members said. A second bullet entered his back and shot through his stomach.
In a court-martial last month, Merida was sentenced to 25 years in prison, believed to be the harshest punishment yet imposed against a U.S. soldier for misconduct in Iraq.
The case is one of about a dozen murder and manslaughter cases filed against U.S. soldiers in Iraq this year. Coming on the heels of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the spurt of cases has alarmed military officials and raised new concerns about the conduct of American soldiers in Iraq and the pressures they endure under prolonged deployments.
The killing has also driven a deep wedge between U.S. and Iraqi troops in the region, just as American officials are hoping to bring the security forces closer together to restore peace in Iraq.
Exactly what happened in the observation tower the night of May 11 may never be known.
Military officials said Merida was unavailable for comment, and they declined to provide details of the case, citing privacy concerns. His attorneys did not respond to a request for an interview. A transcript of his trial is expected to be released once a military judge approves it.
Zaggam is not alive to tell his side of the story. But his family and friends accuse Merida of attempting to sexually assault the Iraqi teenager. When Zaggam resisted, they say, the U.S. soldier killed him in a panic to cover it up.
"The American tried to rape him," said Sgt. Mushtaq Abdul Salem, one of Zaggam's supervisors at the Iraqi national guard base.
Merida first claimed that he killed Zaggam in self-defense because the Iraqi was trying to rob him, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. But when pressed by skeptical military investigators, Merida changed his story and said he shot Zaggam in a fit of rage after a consensual sexual encounter in the tower, officials said.
Merida said the Iraqi was attempting to blackmail him by threatening to expose the incident to Merida's wife and his superior officers, according to an Iraqi who attended the trial. A psychiatrist for Merida testified that the outburst of violence was triggered by traumatic memories of sexual abuse as a child.
Just about the only thing the U.S. military and local Iraqis seem to share is a deep discomfort in discussing the murder because it deals with issues of homosexuality, taboo in both cultures.
Even after the U.S. publicly announced Merida's 25-year sentence, one Iraqi national guard officer at the Ad Dawr base continued to insist that the entire incident was nothing but salacious "rumor."
Merida's mother said her son had told her very little about the incident. "I don't know how it happened," she said in a brief telephone interview from Biscoe, N.C.
At the Ad Dawr base, the incident has been a source of friction between U.S. and Iraqi forces. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers no longer work in lone pairs at the joint military facility, Iraqi soldiers say.
Resentments are starting to fade, but tension was extremely high in the hours and days after the killing.
When shots were heard about 10:30 p.m., all eyes in the camp turned toward the tower, just in time to see a figure tumble to the ground.
"Everybody immediately thought it was the Iraqi soldier that killed the U.S. soldier," said Salem, the Iraqi national guard officer.
Budding camaraderie at the base quickly disintegrated into distrust and suspicion as U.S. soldiers turned their guns on some Iraqi counterparts in the chaos after the shooting.
Zaggam's family was told by U.S. troops that he was being held in prison for attacking an American soldier.
"They lied to me," said Amir Zaggam, one of the victim's brothers. "We didn't know the truth until the next morning when our brother Faris was summoned by Iraqi sergeants and soldiers to retrieve Falah's body."
"I swear to Allah, that even if I went to the States and found that Merida and killed him with my own hands, I still would not be satisfied," said Faris, Zaggam's older brother.
The U.S. military paid the family $2,200 in compensation, but the Zaggams said the money didn't even cover the $4,500 they spent on a funeral.
The family bristles at Merida's allegations that Zaggam engaged in a consensual sexual encounter and then tried to blackmail the soldier. They say Zaggam, who quit school in the third grade to work on his father's farm and joined the national guard about a month before his death, was planning to marry one of his cousins. He was too small and young to pose a threat to Merida, family and friends said.
"He was so polite and religious and disciplined," Faris said. "He was so shy, just like a little girl. No one ever believed for a second the American's version of the story, that he demanded money."
There are conflicting reports about whether Merida and Zaggam knew each other before the night of the murder.
Zaggam's fellow soldiers said he was supposed to work at another guard post that night but asked to be moved to the observation tower.
In addition to the psychiatrist's testimony about Merida's history of being sexually abused as a child, Merida's defense attorney presented medical evidence suggesting that the sexual encounter was consensual.
Zaggam's relatives said they confronted Merida at the trial and the soldier tearfully accepted responsibility for the killing, saying he was concerned about the impact on his wife and 2-year-old son.
The military court reduced his sentence from 30 years to 25 years. He is to serve it out at the Ft. Leavenworth military correctional facility in Kansas. "When I heard about the sentence I laughed because I don't think he'll ever have to serve the whole thing, despite the seriousness of his crime," said Matar At-Shammari, an Iraqi national guard soldier and friend of the victim.
One U.S. soldier familiar with the case expressed sympathy for Merida's story, but said it was no excuse for his action. "If the story is as I've heard, I think he got what he deserved," he said.
-----
Soldiers fear that they are 'sleeping with the enemy'
18/10/2004
telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/18/wirq218.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/18/ixnewstop.html
Adrian Blomfield discovers deep mistrust between American troops and Iraqi soldiers they are training
If the US marines and Iraqi national guardsmen living at the Karmah military barracks near Fallujah talk at all, they speak through the bars of a small window.
The Americans peer out from the ammunition room, filled with weapons confiscated from suspected insurgents, trading banter with the Iraqis who stand on tiptoes in a huddle outside, their eyes squinting against the glare of the late summer sun. Troops in Iraq
Though there is laughter, things are not as they should be at Karmah barracks. "This is camp poison," whispers a marine. "Watch your back."
The sinister atmosphere at Karmah barracks is not difficult to understand. The marines are convinced that many, perhaps most, of the 140 members of the Iraqi National Guard (ING) they share the camp with are double agents working on behalf of the insurgents holding Fallujah.
In the past week alone the marines have arrested five of the guardsmen, including their commanding officer, Capt Ali Mohammed Jasim.
It is just one example that a Vietnam-era experiment Washington resurrected to form the backbone of an offensive planned by the end of the year to retake Fallujah, the crucible of Iraq's insurgency, is going disastrously wrong. Under the Combined Action Platoon (CAP) scheme, US soldiers train Iraqi guardsmen, live with them in the same barracks and venture out on joint patrols, all steps towards a longer-term objective of the withdrawal of American troops.
The plan was first developed in Vietnam, where US marines cohabited with local militias to defend villages from Vietcong raids. At the same time the marines trained the militiamen with the intention of turning them into an effective fighting force, but they were too ill-equipped and underpaid for the plan to have much success.
Mark II of the CAP programme seems to be running into even greater problems. Across the country American troops work with their poorly equipped Iraqi colleagues in an atmosphere soured by distrust - especially in provinces where the insurgency is at its most intense.
With Fallujah under insurgent control, US marines such as those at Karmah are trying to secure the surrounding al-Anbar province.
Their efforts have been blighted by remotely detonated mines, known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), targeting the patrols that nervously venture out on to the lawless streets of towns that have become insurgent havens. Since June, some platoons have seen up to half their men wounded in action. Eighty marines have been killed in the province.
The marines are convinced that the ING knows where many of the IEDs are planted, and even say they have caught guardsmen in the act of laying mines. When joint patrols come under attack, they say, the ING simply refuses to fight. As the relationship worsens, more and more ING are simply refusing to turn up at work. Of the 140 guardsmen based at Karmah an average of between 40 and 60 turn up on any given day. At other CAP barracks, that number is sometimes as low as two. Since the arrest of the Karmah ING captain, the rapport has become even more sullen. The marines sit under canvas shelters, convinced that the guardsmen lurking in their dormitories are traitors and murderers.
"We know when this place is about to come under mortar attack because the ING suddenly disappear," one marine said, staring across the dusty compound at two guardsmen smoking on a wooden bench. "We are supposed to be fighting together, instead we are sleeping with the enemy."
In their bare dormitory angry guardsmen queue up to tell their side of the story, accusing the marines of arrogance, bullying and a cavalier disregard for civilian life. Twelve guardsmen spoke to The Daily Telegraph, but all refused to identify themselves, saying they feared reprisals from the marines.
"The first mistake they make is that when they are attacked they don't just fire at the terrorists, they shoot everywhere," one said.
Other guardsmen alleged that the marines publicly humiliated and even physically assaulted them for minor misdemeanours. Another said he, like many others, had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in planting an IED. He said he was held for 14 days in a tiny "cooler" and then tortured during interrogation.
"They would make me drink water and drink water and then kick me in the stomach till I vomited," he said.
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A War Without Reason
The New York Time
By BOB HERBERT
October 18, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/opinion/18herbert.html?ei=1&en=bd0363f849d6832e&ex=1099142733&pagewanted=print&position=
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
There should no longer be any doubt that the war in Iraq is an exercise in lunacy. It was launched with a spurious rationale, the weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a fantasy relentlessly stoked by obsessively hawkish middle-aged men who ran and hid when they were of fighting age and the nation was at war.
Now we find that we can't win this war we started. Soldiers and civilians alike are trapped in the proverbial briar patch, unable to move around safely in a country that the warmongers thought would be easy to conquer and then rebuild.
There is no way to overstate how profoundly wrong they were.
Our troops continue to die but we can't even identify the enemy, which is why so many innocent Iraqi civilians - including women and children - are being blown away. The civilians are being killed by the thousands, even as the dreaded Saddam Hussein is receiving first-class health care (most recently a successful hernia operation) from his captors.
Last week, in a story that read like a chapter from an antiwar novel, we learned that members of an Army Reserve platoon were taken into custody and held for two days after they refused to deliver a shipment of fuel to Taji, a town 15 miles north of Baghdad. They complained that the trip was too dangerous to make without an escort of armored vehicles. Several of the reservists described the trip as a "suicide mission."
The military said that was an isolated incident, but there is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the troops, many of whom feel they are targets surrounded by hostile Iraqis -insurgents and ordinary civilians alike - in a war that lacks a clearly defined mission.
Even the heavily fortified Green Zone, which contains the U.S. embassy and the headquarters of the interim Iraqi government, was penetrated by suicide bombers last Thursday. At least five people, including three Americans who had been providing security for diplomats, were killed in the attack.
As the pointlessness of this war grows ever clearer, the president's grand alliance, like some of the soldiers on the ground, is losing its resolve. When John Kerry, in the first presidential debate, mentioned only Britain and Australia as he mocked Mr. Bush's "coalition" in Iraq, the president famously replied, "You forgot Poland."
Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq. But on Friday the prime minister, Marek Belka, announced that he will cut that number early next year, and then "will engage in talks on a further reduction."
Mr. Belka has a political problem. He can't explain the war to his constituents. And that's because there is no rational explanation.
As for the rebuilding of Iraq, forget about it. Hundreds of schools were damaged by U.S. bombing and thousands were looted by Iraqis. It's hard to believe that an administration that won't rebuild schools here in America will really go to bat for schoolkids in Iraq. Millions of Iraqi kids now attend schools that are decrepit and, in many cases, all but falling down - lacking such essentials as desks, chairs and even toilets, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.
Military commanders are warning that delays in the overall reconstruction are increasing the danger for American troops. A senior American military officer told The Times, "We can either put Iraqis back to work, or we can have them shoot [rocket-propelled grenades] at us."
The president and his apologists never understood what they were getting into in Iraq. What is unmistakable now is that Americans will never be willing to commit the overwhelming numbers of troops and spend the hundreds of billions of additional dollars necessary to have even a hope of bringing long-term stability to Iraq.
This is a war that never made sense and now we are seeing - from the troops on the ground, from our allies overseas and increasingly from the population here at home - the inevitable reluctance to forge ahead with the madness.
The president likes to say he made exactly the right decision on Iraq. Each new death of a soldier or a civilian, each child who loses a parent to the carnage, each healthy body that is broken or burned in this war that didn't have to happen, is a reminder of how horribly wrong he was.
-------- israel / palestine
Settlers Say Israel Leader Rejects Vote on Pullout
October 18, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/international/middleeast/18sharon.html?hp&ex=1098072000&en=7e9364bf1aab990e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
JERUSALEM, Oct. 17 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday flatly rejected a demand by Jewish settler leaders that he hold a national referendum on his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, the settlers said.
Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a senior official with the Yesha Council, the main group representing settlers, called the two-hour meeting with the prime minister "a disgrace."
"We met a stubborn prime minister,'' Mr. Mor-Yosef said afterward. "He wouldn't answer any of our questions. He is determined to lead the people to a bottomless chasm."
Mr. Sharon, who had championed the settler movement for decades, had not met with settler leaders since first raising the withdrawal plan last year.
He says he sees no future for Jews in Gaza and intends to remove all 8,000 settlers next year. About 1.3 million Palestinians live in the coastal territory.
The prime minister sees the Gaza pullout as part of a broader effort that includes strengthening Israel's control over the much larger Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Still, the settlers feel betrayed by Mr. Sharon and have staged large protests to oppose the plan.
They are demanding a nationwide referendum despite opinion surveys that consistently indicate that roughly two-thirds of Israelis support the pullout.
Mr. Sharon has said he opposes a referendum because it would delay his timetable for the withdrawal, which he wants to carry out before the end of next year.
He has lost two nonbinding votes on the withdrawal plan, both held within his own Likud Party.
However, Mr. Sharon's cabinet approved the plan in principle in June, and the proposal is to go before Parliament for a debate and a vote on Oct. 25.
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Sharon Says Nothing Will Stop Gaza Plan
October 18, 2004
By JOSEF FEDERMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Facing unrelenting criticism from Jewish settlers, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday nothing would deter him from pushing forward with his plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
Scattered fighting in Gaza, meanwhile, killed at least five Palestinian militants.
Sharon, a longtime patron of the settlements, spoke a day after holding a tense meeting with settler leaders that ended with battle lines drawn between the two sides.
Sharon has pledged to put his "disengagement plan" to a parliamentary vote Oct. 25. Despite a rift in his hard-line Likud Party, he is expected to prevail with the backing of dovish opposition parties.
Sharon told reporters Monday he is required to bring his plan to parliament and he intends to follow through, despite pressure from the settlers.
"The responsibility of managing the issues of the country, the responsibility of the future of the country, is not the concern of just one group. It is the concern of the entire nation, and this burden is placed on my shoulders, and this is how I plan to behave," he said.
Settler leaders called their Sunday meeting with their former ally "disgraceful" and pressed for a national referendum while pledging to torpedo the withdrawal.
Gaza settlers, scheduled to meet Tuesday with Sharon, were considering canceling the session.
"The prime minister is intractable," said Eran Sternberg, spokesman for the Gaza settlers. "He runs roughshod over everyone. He thinks, 'I am the nation, and the nation is me.'"
About 8,200 settlers live in 21 Gaza settlements among 1.3 million Palestinians. Sharon decided the settlers cannot remain in the hostile, poverty-stricken seaside territory. His plan also calls for evacuating four tiny enclaves in the northern part of the West Bank next summer.
Sharon says his plan will increase Israel's security after four years of fighting with the Palestinians and help consolidate control over large chunks of the West Bank. The settlers accuse Sharon of caving in to Palestinian violence, warning that dismantling any settlements sets a dangerous precedent.
The settlers, as well as hard-line allies within Sharon's government, have been pushing him to hold a referendum on the withdrawal. He has rejected that, calling it a delaying tactic by his opponents. Legal experts say the process for holding the vote could take months.
Polls show about two-thirds of Israelis support the pullout, despite large, well-funded and publicized protests by the settlers and their backers. Sharon already has lost two separate votes within his party on his plan.
In the wake of his meeting with the settlers, Sharon said he was especially concerned by an influential rabbi's recent call on Orthodox Jewish soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate the settlements. Dozens of lower-ranking rabbis have signed on to the call.
"The worst thing is to give in to threats of violence and to talk about disobeying orders," Sharon said. "These are very grave things. I believe these things will be prevented because these are real dangers."
The threat of extremist violence is very sensitive in Israel. In 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an ultranationalist Jew opposed to his peacemaking with the Palestinians.
Fighting in Gaza has increased in recent months as Israel and Palestinian militants each try to declare victory ahead of the planned Israeli withdrawal, and violence continued Monday.
Two Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated Israel from Gaza were killed after a long shootout with Israeli soldiers, the military said.
The gunmen cut through the fence surrounding Gaza and reached an orchard just 300 yards from an Israeli community when the battle broke out, the military said. Troops shot and killed both men, one of whom blew up, apparently because he was wearing an explosives belt, the army said.
Residents of a nearby kibbutz, or communal farm, were temporarily confined to their homes while troops searched the orchard for more explosives or arms.
The militant Hamas group claimed responsibility for the infiltration and said the two gunmen belonged to the group. Hamas, which opposes the existence of Israel, has killed hundreds of Israelis in the past four years.
The army also killed two militants who planted an explosive device in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, the military said. Islamic Jihad said the men belonged to the group.
In another attack near the Kissufim crossing into Israel, two militants attacked a military vehicle and injured one soldier, the army said. The troops returned fire, apparently killing the two men, the army said. Islamic Jihad said one of its militants was killed.
The violence came days after the army ended a broad operation in northern Gaza aimed at preventing Palestinians from firing homemade rockets at Israeli towns.
Peter Hansen, commissioner of the U.N. agency charged with caring for Palestinian refugees, inspected damaged buildings, including a demolished kindergarten, in northern Gaza.
Hansen said his agency had confirmed 107 deaths, including 30 people under the age of 18. He also said 90 homes were destroyed, leaving an estimated 600-700 people homeless.
"The damage, of course, is overwhelming and very great. It is the largest incursion we have seen during this current intefadeh," he said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia appealed for foreign countries to condemn the offensive.
"We call on the whole world, the United Nations, to come and see the volume, the size of the tragedy, the size of mass destruction, caused by the Israelis' war machine in northern Gaza," he said.
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Official warns of Gaza upheaval
October 18, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041017-111447-5197r.htm
A top Palestinian official warned the United States yesterday that Israel's planned unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip would leave the door open for terrorists and lead to further conflict.
"We may have no more than another month to stop the situation from spreading into long-term conflict," said Hassan Abu Libdeh, chief of staff in the office of the Palestinian prime minister.
Mr. Libdeh told a weekend conference that the plan to leave Gaza unilaterally without a coordinated security plan between the two sides would be like throwing the key to the area into the air for terrorist groups to catch.
"We will see who grabs the key when you throw it," Mr. Libdeh told guests of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But we are shorter, much shorter."
Despite strong settler resistance and their calls for a national referendum on the pullout, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he will move ahead with the plan. The move, he insists, will boost Israel's security after four years of a violent Palestinian uprising or "intifada."
Israeli Housing Minister Tzipi Livni told the same gathering that the plan to unilaterally disengage from Gaza was intended "not to stop any kind of political process, but to make a window of opportunity while the Palestinians are doing nothing to reform."
Once the withdrawal is complete, she said, both sides again could pick up the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.
"We wanted to change the assumption and send a message to the Palestinians that terror does not pay and time is working against those who use force," Miss Livni said. "The United States is in total understanding."
Indeed, a senior foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said at the conference that a Kerry administration would stand unambiguously with the Israelis.
"America's commitment to Israel is unshakable," said Wendy Sherman. "We do take sides in this conflict, and we are not embarrassed to say so. ... No one should be under the illusion that they can drive a wedge between us."
Mr. Libdeh said he hoped the statement did not reflect the views of Mr. Kerry.
"This is very much a non-starter. America cannot be an honest broker without being neutral. Taking sides means they are no longer fit for the role of broker," he said.
Instead, Mr. Libdeh called for an "active, balanced and effective U.S. involvement" at all times.
"We need an external voice. We cannot do it on our own. The U.S. administration is very much qualified to play this role," he said.
Mr. Sharon has angered Israeli settlers, once his most ardent supporters, with his disengagement plan, although opinion polls show that a solid majority of Israelis support the scheme.
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Israelis Kill 5 Palestinians;
Sharon Under Pressure
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast.html
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops killed five Palestinian militants in gun battles Monday as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought to dampen rising pressure for a referendum on his plan to withdraw from occupied Gaza.
In a rare episode of its kind, two Hamas militants breached the new security fence along Gaza's border with Israel and moved in on a kibbutz, or collective farm, for an attack when they were spotted and shot dead by troops, military sources said.
Two other militants were killed while trying to plant a bomb near a Jewish settlement in an occupied part of southern Gaza, the Islamic Jihad group said. Another militant was killed, and a soldier hurt, near another settlement, a military source said.
Israeli opinion polls show a solid majority for Sharon's plan to evacuate 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza and a few of 230,000 from the West Bank next year in order to ``disengage'' from conflict with the Palestinians.
But opposition from ultra-nationalist settlers and their political patrons has unraveled Sharon's right-wing coalition and he now faces calls for a referendum on ``disengagement'' even from proponents of his plan within his divided Likud party.
Sharon believes a referendum would play into the hands of foes by delaying withdrawals beyond 2005 and leaving them vulnerable to a general election scheduled the following year.
Early elections would be Sharon's last resort if his plan foundered on the rocks of his coalition. But he poured cold water on media reports he was now considering going to a vote.
``The prime minister believes we must refrain from dragging the people into an election campaign at a time when the political and economic program is being carried out,'' his office said in a statement.
SHARON STANDS FIRM
Referendum advocates, including most of Likud's parliament deputies who were to debate the way ahead in a meeting with Sharon Monday, say it could safeguard political stability in Israel and deter possible violence against his plan.
Rebels in Sharon's camp reject any pullout from Gaza as ``a reward to Palestinian terrorism'' and have gained strength from an upsurge of attacks by militants bent on proving they chased settlers out of Gaza.
Settler leaders failed at a stormy meeting with Sharon on Sunday to win him over to a referendum. They called his stance ``a disgrace'' and hinted that it could stir violent resistance.
Firing back Monday, Sharon alluded to a referendum and told reporters: ``I think the worst thing possible is to buckle to threats of violence. This (threat) is very serious and such phenomena will be prevented.''
The umbrella YESHA Council of Jewish settlements issued an open letter Monday saying it would oppose violence whether a referendum was held or not.
But Sharon has criticized what he has called incitement by foes of withdrawals including influential pro-settler rabbis who see territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war as Jewish by biblical birthright.
Palestinians welcome any Israeli pullout from land they seek for a state of their own. But they see the Gaza withdrawal as a ruse to cement Israel's hold on large West Bank settlements and cite remarks by Sharon's main adviser to that effect as proof.
Sharon expects to carry a scheduled Oct. 25 vote in parliament on the principles of ``disengagement'' with the support of dovish opposition deputies offsetting a mutiny by around 15 in Likud's 40-member faction.
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'When we came back they had destroyed all the houses'
October 18, 2004
The Guardian
Chris McGreal at Jabaliya refugee camp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1329830,00.html
The Israeli general who commanded the destruction of the only Jewish settlement in the Sinai before it was returned to Egypt recently offered Ariel Sharon advice on how to carry out his pledge to remove settlers from the Gaza strip.
"Evicting someone from the home they've lived in for 20 years isn't a simple matter," wrote Brigadier General Obed Tira. "To remove a family from its home is embarrassing and difficult, and that is why the removal needs to be done with a lot of love and a lot of wisdom."
The soldiers who arrived outside the home of Ghalia Abu Radwan, her octogenarian parents, blind siblings and assortment of children in Khan Yunis in the middle of the night showed no love, and, if they were embarrassed, there was no way to know it because they were hidden behind the armour of their bulldozers and tanks.
As the loudspeakers on the tanks ordered the families out, and bursts of gunfire sharpened the terror, Mrs Abu Radwan shepherded her blind brother and sister to safety.
"I grabbed them by the hand and shouted to my mother to follow us," said Mrs Abu Radwan. "Think of it - 25 children, two blind adults and my parents who cannot run. My sister-in-law left her three year-old behind in the chaos and had to go back to get him. When we came back they had destroyed all the houses."
Mrs Abu Radwan's mother, Ommuhammed, said she thought she would also die.
"I kept imagining a piece of shrapnel hitting my head. I was so exhausted I had to crawl in the sand sometimes or put my hand on Ghalia's shoulder and let her pull me," she said.
"Since 1948, the Israelis have demolished three of my homes. This is the most difficult because before others helped us rebuild but now everyone needs help and I don't know who will help us."
While Mr Sharon agonises over how to draw 7,500 Jewish settlers out of Israel's Gaza colonies - offering hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to each family - the army has already bulldozed close to 9,000 Palestinians from their homes in the Gaza strip this year alone.
Most got no more than a few minutes notice to get out and lost all but the possessions they could hurriedly bundle together.
The latest target was Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza city. From dawn on Saturday the people came, trying to find their bearings amid the rubble and then scrambling across the sand where once there was an asphalt road.
A man ripped at the remains of his shattered home in search of anything that could be saved, burrowing out a picture, some clothes, a schoolbook. Another collapsed on to the wreckage, stunned and silent. The tide began as soon as it was clear that Israeli tanks had pulled out of Jabaliya after 17 days of destruction and killing. The bulldozers left behind dozens of flattened homes and hundreds homeless.
The remains of the mosque were marked by its twisted steel minaret and loudspeakers. A sewage line torn from the ground spewed filth as people attempted to jump it. The only clue to the existence of a small orange grove was a few of the scattered fruits.
The scale of the destruction - about 20 acres of homes, shops and roads razed or ground into the sand - matched the Israelis' controversial assault on Jenin refugee camp two years ago. But the death toll in Jabaliya was double that with about 130 people killed, one in six of them children 15 or younger.
Within hours of pulling out of Jabaliya, the army's bulldozers were at work again in another Gaza refugee camp, Rafah.
"One would have thought that the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip would decrease house demolitions," said Kenneth Ross, director of Human Rights Watch, after visiting Jabaliya.
"In fact, house demolitions have risen dramatically. This seems to reflect on the one hand a political show of force and Sharon's desire not to be seen to withdraw under fire, but also part of his vision to create a buffer zone along the Egyptian border. It is also part of a wider pattern of punishing civilians."
A United Nations human rights report on the Israeli occupation to be presented to the general assembly this month accuses Israel of "massive and wanton destruction of property" in the Gaza strip.
"Bulldozers have destroyed homes in a purposeless manner and have savagely dug up roads, including electricity, sewage and water lines," it says.
Most of the destruction is focused on Rafah, along Gaza's border with Egypt, and neighbouring Khan Yunis refugee camp.
But in recent weeks there has also been widespread destruction of homes as the army widened the "security zone" around Netzarim Jewish settlement, and in the Palestinian towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lehia.
The pummelling of Rafah in May left about 4,000 people homeless. Four years ago, buildings in the refugee camp ran right up to the military area on the border, known as the Philadelphi road. Half of Rafah's Block O neighbourhood has since been destroyed.
Even after Israel pulls its settlers and soldiers out of the Gaza strip, it will remain the occupying power under international law, and it intends to strengthen its grip on the territory's borders. The disengagement plan speaks of "widening the area" along the Philadelphi road.
"So far about 10% of Rafah is destroyed and if Israeli plans are carried through, approximately a third of Rafah will be destroyed," said Mr Ross.
With the destruction comes death. In July, a 75 year-old man in a wheelchair, Ibrahim Halfalla, was crushed to death under the rubble of his Khan Yunis home by an army bulldozer because he did not get out in time.
As Mrs Abu Radwan and her family fled, the army shot dead a 60-year-old neighbour, Ahmad Abu-Nimer, as he fled. Two other men were wounded by gunfire.
Israel says the demolitions meet the international legal requirement of military necessity because homes are destroyed in the hunt for weapons smuggling tunnels or because they are used by Palestinian combatants to attack Israeli forces.
The UN and Human Rights Watch say that is merely an excuse. They say it would be more efficient, and safer for Israeli troops, to detect and close off the tunnels behind the protective wall the military has built along the border by using listening devices and ground penetrating radar.
They add that the number of tunnels found is relatively small in comparison to the number of buildings destroyed.
The army claims to have uncovered 90, but that number includes several entrances to the same tunnel and the beginnings of wells.
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Presbyterian Church May Pressure Israel
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Syria-US-Presbyterians.html
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- The head of a visiting U.S. Presbyterian Church delegation called on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories and said Monday that his church is studying the possibility of withholding investments to increase pressure on Israel.
``The occupation by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza must end because it is oppressive and destructive for the Palestinian people,'' the Rev. Nile Harper said in an interview with The Associated Press.
He criticized as ``unhelpful'' the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank to prevent Palestinian suicide bombings.
Harper, of Ann Arbor, Mich., warned that the General Assembly of his church, whose investments in U.S. firms total $8 billion, had instructed its investment agency to study the possibility of withdrawing its money from U.S. corporations whose products ``are being destructively used against the Palestinians'' by Israel.
The 24-member delegation traveled to Lebanon on Sunday and met with the south Lebanon commander of Hezbollah, a group Washington calls terrorist but Lebanon sees as a legitimate resistance movement against Israeli occupation of Arab lands.
On Monday, they traveled to Syria, where they met with the minister of expatriates. They were scheduled to meet with President Bashar Assad on Tuesday and to travel to Jordan on Wednesday.
The meeting will aim to gauge the Syrian president's views on Syria's relationship with the United States, said the delegation's coordinator, Peter Sulyok.
``We are interested in peace and justice for Palestinians as well as in the relationship between Syria and Lebanon and Syria and Israel,'' Sulyok said. ``We will be looking to see what new initiatives there might be, what possibilities there might be for peace.''
Syria and Lebanon have rejected demands by the U.N. Security Council that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The issue has created new tensions between Washington and Damascus, and the United States and France are trying to get the Security Council to repeat the demands.
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NATO chief starts tour of Central Asia
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Oct 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041018142214.kuzdmw77.html
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer left Brussels on Monday on his first trip as NATO secretary general to Central Asia where he will seek to step up cooperation between the Atlantic Alliance and the strategic region, his press office said.
De Hoop Scheffer's tour will take him to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, meeting with the president of each country, the office said in a statement.
He is accompanied by his new special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, Robert Simmons, a former US State Department official.
In Istanbul in late June, heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization called for heightened cooperation with the strategically important Central Asian countries.
The five former Soviet republics are represented on the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a body set up for consultation between NATO and partner states. The five countries also take part in the Partnership for Peace program aimed at encouraging reforms in members' defense structures.
De Hoop Scheffer also plans visits in the coming weeks to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
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Brazil Signs Space Agreement With Russia
Oct 18, 2004
by Frank Braun
Los Angeles CA (UPI)
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-04zt.html
Brazil and Russia are about to expand their cooperation in space, officials at AEB, the country's space agency, told United Press International.
Both countries plan to sign a memorandum of understanding during Russian President Vladimir Putin's scheduled visit to Brazil in late November. The memorandum calls for the joint development and production of launch vehicles, the launch of geostationary satellites and the joint development and utilization of Brazil's Alcantara Launch Center, an AEB officials said.
In addition, during Putin's visit both countries are expected to finalize negotiations on a financial package for the implementation of such joint projects, the official added.
Russian participation in the development of Brazil's rockets or utilization of Alcantara would mark a significant milestone in the global commercial space community.
If joint development and utilization means the Russians plan to launch any of their rockets from Alcantara, that would be only the second time a Russian launcher would lift off from a spaceport other than Baikonur in Kazakhstan, or Plesetsk, both former Soviet launch centers currently utilized by the Russians.
Preliminary discussions concerning the memorandum took place in Moscow last week. Participants included Jose Alencar, Brazil's vice president; Mikhail Fradkov, the Russian prime minister; Sergio Gaudenzi, president of AEB, and Anatoliy Perminov, head of FKA, Russia's new Federal Space Agency.
FKA was created six months ago as a result of administrative reform in the country's space program, the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda reported. Perminov formerly was first commander of Russia's Space Forces.
Brazilian space officials said the proposed memorandum expands two existing scientific agreements between the countries. The first agreement was called The Cooperative Use and Research of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes and the second was Basic Cooperation in Science, Technology, and Technical Areas. The countries signed both agreements in November 1997.
Russia's direct involvement in Brazil's space program accelerated following the explosion of Brazil's VLS rocket at Alcantara in August 2003. At that time, Russian space officials were invited to participate in the investigation to determine the cause of the explosion, which killed 21.
Last September, AEB awarded a contract to the Russian firm KBTM for specific technical assistance in rebuilding the launch tower destroyed in the VLS explosion, according the Brazilian newspaper, Gazeta Mercantil.
The newspaper reported the new VLS launch tower is being built with the provision for the future use of liquid-fuel rocket propellants, advanced technology, which the Brazilians do not yet possess, but which is being studied with the Russians to be incorporated into one of the future versions of the Brazilian VLS rocket.
KBTM, otherwise known as the Transport Engineering Design Bureau, is part of FKA.
Signing the memorandum with the Brazilians will put the Russians just a few steps behind the Ukrainians, who already have established bilateral agreements with AEB for space cooperation. Such agreements are a necessary prerequisite for joint commercial space activities between the two countries.
Last month, Brazil's Congress approved a commercial treaty with Ukraine that paves the way for a joint-venture company to build launch facilities in Alcantara for the Ukrainian Cyclone-4 rocket.
In 2007, the Europeans and Russians plan to begin launching Russian Soyuz rockets from the European Space Agency's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, just a few hundred miles north of Alcantara. Both launch centers are situated near the equator, making them the best global locations to launch telecommunications satellites.
In addition to building payload-integration and other facilities for lofting commercial satellites, the Russians and Europeans also plan to build installations that would allow sending human crews aboard their Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station from French Guiana.
According to ESA's Web site, The (Soyuz) launch infrastructure has been designed to ensure that it can be smoothly adapted for human spaceflight, should this be decided upon.
-------- un
War in Iraq Did Not Make World Safer, Annan Says
Associated Press
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40596-2004Oct17.html
LONDON, Oct. 17 -- The U.S.-led war in Iraq has not made the world any safer, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a British television interview that aired on Sunday.
"I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq," Annan told the ITV network.
"We have a lot of work to do as an international community to try and make the world safer," he said in an interview on the network's "The Jonathan Dimbleby Program."
Annan has previously described the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein as "illegal."
The U.N. leader said he believed that Iraq was on track to hold elections at the end of January and said he would speak out if he was not satisfied with the way they are conducted.
"If that sort of judgment or any decision which is made which we think detracts from the credibility and viability of the elections, we will be duty-bound to say so," he said.
Annan also dismissed suggestions that France, Russia and China had been prepared to ease sanctions on Hussein's government in return for oil contracts.
A U.S. report issued earlier this month by the Iraq Survey Group, an entity set up to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, concluded that Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments with oil contracts and bribes to companies and political figures in an effort to end sanctions.
Annan said it was "inconceivable" that Hussein's efforts could have influenced policy in the countries concerned.
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U.S.: Too Early to Tell Iraq Unit's Fate
October 18, 2004
By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_UNIT_INVESTIGATION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. military said Monday no decision had been taken whether to discipline Army reservists who refused a supply mission last week, despite statements from their relatives that the soldiers would be discharged.
"It is too early in the process to tell if any disciplinary actions will be initiated," Maj. Richard Spiegel, spokesman for the 13th Corps Support Command in Taji, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
No decision will be made until the investigation is completed and recommendations are made, he said.
"I could not speculate as to why soldiers would be telling people that they are going to be discharged," he said.
The Army announced last week it was investigating up to 19 members of a platoon from the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in Rock Hill, South Carolina, after they refused to transport supplies from Tallil air base near Nasiriyah to Taji north of Baghdad.
On Monday, Ricky Scott of Quinton, Alabama, father of one of the soldiers involved, told CBS television's "The Early Show" that his son, Spc. Scott Shealey, "is being told he is going to be processed out of the Army with a general" discharge. Shealey said his son "is very depressed about this."
A general discharge is consider a disciplinary action that would lead soldiers to risk losing most, if not all veterans benefits.
However, the commanding general of the 13th Corps Support Command, Brig. Gen. James Chambers, told reporters in Baghdad on Sunday that two investigations were under way and that 18 soldiers were involved. He also said none was under arrest and that it was too early to tell whether the soldiers would be disciplined.
During a press conference Sunday, Chambers said the Army will study protective measures for supply vehicles and add steel plating if necessary. Some of the soldiers told family members they refused the assignment because they lacked proper equipment and protection.
Chambers said the command will "assess armor" on supply vehicles, which are often subject to insurgent attack, and add steel plating if necessary.
He denied claims by some of the soldiers to their families that the fuel they were to deliver was contaminated.
The mission was later carried out by other soldiers from the 343rd, which has at least 120 soldiers, the military said.
Chambers has since ordered the 343rd to undergo a "safety-maintenance stand down," during which it will conduct no further missions as the unit's vehicles are inspected, the military said.
The platoon has troops from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina.
The issue of lack of appropriate equipment has been a longstanding complaint by low-level soldiers and higher U.S. command.
Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq from mid-2003 till this summer, sent a letter to the Pentagon last December complaining that supplies were short and that this was adversely affecting the ability of troops to fight, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Sanchez, who has returned to an assignment in Germany, told top Army officials in the Dec. 4 letter that there was a severe lack of key parts for equipment vital to the mission and that the problem was so severe that "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low," the newspaper said.
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Unit balked at unarmored trucks
October 18, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20041017-111444-6704r.htm
BAGHDAD - U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who refused orders to drive a dangerous route were members of one of only a few supply units whose trucks are still unarmored, their commanding general said yesterday.
The soldiers, who are under investigation, previously had focused on local missions in safer parts of southern Iraq and had never driven a convoy north along the attack-prone roads passing through Baghdad.
"Not all of their trucks are completely armored. In their case, they haven't had the chance to get armored," said Brig. Gen. James E. Chambers, commanding general of 13th Corps Support Command, which sends about 250 convoys ferrying Army fuel, food and ammunition across Iraq each day.
Gen. Chambers, speaking in Baghdad, said the 18 soldiers involved in the incident had returned to duty and that it was "too early" to determine whether any will face disciplinary action.
He said a pair of investigations are examining the soldiers' disobedience as well as their complaints that the trucks were unfit for the hazardous journey.
Gen. Chambers said 80 percent of the 13th Corps Support Command's 4,000 trucks have been fitted with custom steel plate, but some of those in the unit that balked, the 343rd Quartermaster Company, were among the last left unarmored, because the unit's mission normally confines it to a less dangerous part of Iraq.
None of the 13th's trucks arrived in Iraq with armor. Since February, the unit's engineers and private contractors have been working in impromptu maintenance yards to weld heavy metal "boxes" over truck cabs.
Gen. Chambers said the 18 soldiers who refused the mission on Wednesday morning - driving seven fuel tankers from Tallil air base near Nasariyah to Taji north of Baghdad - also appeared to have balked at their mission because of the trucks' bad condition.
"They were concerned about the maintenance," Gen. Chambers said. "If there is a maintenance issue, we'll clear it up."
Gen. Chambers said the disobedience was not indicative of wider U.S. Army morale or maintenance problems. The 18 soldiers were "moved to a separate location" for questioning and have since returned to duty, he said.
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General Reported Shortages In Iraq
Situation Is Improved, Top Army Officials Say
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40321-2004Oct17.html
The top U.S. commander in Iraq complained to the Pentagon last winter that his supply situation was so poor that it threatened Army troops' ability to fight, according to an official document that has surfaced only now.
The lack of key spare parts for gear vital to combat operations, such as tanks and helicopters, was causing problems so severe, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote in a letter to top Army officials, that "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low."
Senior Army officials said that most of Sanchez's concerns have been addressed in recent months but that they continue to keep a close eye on the problems he identified. The situation is "substantially better" now, said Gary Motsek, deputy director of operations for the Army Materiel Command.
Sanchez, who was the senior commander on the ground in Iraq from the summer of 2003 until the summer of 2004, said in his letter that Army units in Iraq were "struggling just to maintain . . . relatively low readiness rates" on key combat systems, such as M-1 Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, anti-mortar radars and Black Hawk helicopters.
He also said units were waiting an average of 40 days for critical spare parts, which he noted was almost three times the Army's average. In some Army supply depots in Iraq, 40 percent of critical parts were at "zero balance," meaning they were absent from depot shelves, he said.
He also protested in his letter, sent Dec. 4 to the number two officer in the Army, with copies to other senior officials, that his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor but that their delivery had been postponed twice in the month before he was writing. There were 131,000 U.S. troops in Iraq at the time.
In what appears to be a plea to top officials to spur the bureaucracy to respond more quickly, Sanchez concluded, "I cannot sustain readiness without Army-level intervention."
Sanchez, who since has moved back to his permanent base in Germany, did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment.
His letter of concern has surfaced after repeated statements by President Bush that he is determined to ensure that U.S. troops fighting in Iraq have all that they need to execute their missions. "I have pledged, as has the secretary of defense, to give our troops everything that is necessary to complete their mission with the utmost safety," he said in May. Earlier this month in Manchester, N.H., he said, "When America puts our troops in combat, I believe they deserve the best training, the best equipment, the full support of our government."
A copy of Sanchez's letter was given to The Washington Post by a person familiar with the situation who was dismayed that front-line troops had not been adequately supplied. That person also disagrees with the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, but said that was not part of the motivation in providing the document.
The disclosure of Sanchez's concerns also follows recent comments by former ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Sanchez's civilian counterpart in running the U.S. occupation of Iraq, that he believed more troops were needed in Iraq and had asked the Bush administration to send them.
Lt. Gen. Claude V. Christianson, the senior logistics officer on the Army staff at the Pentagon, said the readiness problems in Iraq peaked last fall but largely have been addressed. He said they were caused by a combination of problems in the supply pipeline and an unexpectedly high pace of combat operations as the Iraqi insurgency flared last year.
"All of a sudden, at the end of July [2003], the insurgency started to do that IED business all over Iraq," he noted, using the acronym for "improvised explosive device," the military's term for roadside bombs. In response, the pace, or "operating tempo," for U.S. troops jumped, causing them to use their tanks and other armored vehicles at much higher rates than had been expected.
"The tanks are operating at 3,000 to 4,000 miles a year," Christianson said, which he noted is about five times the rate they are driven while being used for training at their home bases. The readiness rate for M-1 Abrams tanks fell to 78 percent last October, he said, compared with an Army standard of 90 percent. Because of the intensity of recent operations, said Motsek of the Army Materiel Command, the readiness rate for the tanks recently dropped from 95 percent to 83 percent.
Readiness rates also generally dipped last spring when insurgents destroyed seven bridges along the main supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad, Christianson said. In some cases, he said, supplies were cut off for "several days."
But he said the supply situation has improved since then, even as the pace of U.S. combat operations has remained intense. The waiting period for critical spare parts in Iraq is now about 24 days, about half of what it was when Sanchez wrote his letter, Christianson said.
The body armor problem -- which had become a hot-button issue with Congress after some families bought protective armor privately and shipped it to their relatives in the Army in Iraq -- was solved sooner, Christianson noted, with all troops in Iraq equipped with updated gear by the end of January, about seven weeks after Sanchez wrote his letter.
Christianson said Sanchez sent only one such statement of concern from Iraq. "It's the only one we received from Rick that had anything to do with readiness," he said. He said he had not been shocked by the letter because Army logisticians were aware of the problems, agreed with Sanchez's assessment of them and already were taking steps to remedy them.
Motsek said the readiness of ground combat systems such as tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles remains a concern but no longer must be handled on an "emergency" basis, with tracks and other heavy parts being shipped by air. "We are now at the point where we can routinely ship tracks" by sea, which is far less expensive, he said. That is mainly because the manufacturing capacity to produce tracks has expanded to meet the unexpected surge in demand caused by fighting in Iraq, he said.
Sanchez's letter was sent after the most intense insurgent offensive the U.S.-led occupation force had seen up to that point. In a series of attacks that coincided with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan near the end of October last year, 87 U.S. service members were killed. Under Islam's lunar calendar, Ramadan this year began a few days ago.
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
--------
Foreign minister: Japan committed to reducing U.S. military presence on Okinawa
Stars and Stripes
By Chiyomi Sumida,
October 18, 2004
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24959
NAHA, Okinawa - Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura gave assurance to Okinawan leaders Saturday that the Japanese government is committed to reducing the U.S. military presence on Okinawa.
He also said that the government would seek a way to shorten construction periods for a new airport planned offshore near Camp Schwab, which will be a relocation of operations at Futenma Marine Corps Air Station.
"Under the present plan, it would take nine to 10 years after the actual construction starts" to complete the work, he said during a press conference before wrapping up his first visit to Okinawa since he assumed the post last month.
"This technical part needs improvement. I will urge technical level discussions and study to shorten work periods."
During his two-day tour to Japan's southernmost island prefecture, where 75 percent of U.S. military facilities and installations in Japan are located, he met separately with Gov. Keiichi Inamine, prefectural assembly members and mayors of local communities that host military bases on the island.
Prior to the meetings with local leaders, Machimura visited Okinawa International University, where a Marine Corps CH-53D helicopter crashed Aug. 13. The Sea Stallion's rotors crashed on the campus and caught fire, damaging a university administration building. Three crewmembers were injured but there were no casualties to civilians on the ground.
Machimura also visited Henoko, a site for a new airport to replace Futenma Marine Corps Air Station.
During a talk with Inamine, Machimura said that he would try his best to reduce the burden of the U.S. military on Okinawa.
"Prime Minister [Junichiro] Koizumi told me that a good relationship with the United States is of the utmost importance to Japan," he said. Koizumi gave him instructions to make his best effort to work on realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, he said.
"While maintaining the effect of the bilateral security arrangement in peacekeeping in the regions, he told me to reduce the burden of Okinawa at the same time," he said.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that Machimura met with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, to discuss the reconfiguration of the U.S. military in Japan. During the talk in Washington, he pressed the United States to reduce its military presence on Okinawa. Machimura urged the United States, however, to leave adequate forces in Japan to promote security in the region.
Machimura told Inamine that seeing charred trees and the wall at the university where the Marine Corps helicopter crashed made him realize how serious the incident was.
"I saw with my own eyes that the crash was one step short of a disaster," he said. "Such an accident is certainly something that should never happen again."
Japan urged the United States to take preventive measures and to ensure safe aircraft operations, he said.
The best preventive measure, he said, is to close the air station, which sits in the midst of a heavily populated area.
"The fundamental solution is to move the air station operations elsewhere," he said.
Inamine said that expectations are becoming high among the people of Okinawa for reducing military presence on the island as realignment discussions between the governments progress. He said he wanted a visible reduction.
Inamine presented Machimura with a written petition that includes protests against the resumption of CH-53D helicopter flights and against an ongoing project on Camp Hansen for the U.S. Army urban combat training complex.
"To maintain the security alliance and to reduce the burden of Okinawa seemingly do not go together," Machimura told reporters during a press conference at the foreign ministry's Okinawa Liaison Office.
"But to achieve balance between the two issues is my job," he said.
--------
The Reserve Mutiny How the Iraq war is crippling the Army Reserve.
MSN
Oct. 18, 2004
By Phillip Carter
http://slate.msn.com/id/2108357/
First reports are always wrong, or so the military maxim goes. The initial dispatches from Iraq said that a platoon from the Army Reserve's 343rd Quartermaster Company had committed something close to mutiny in the desert by refusing to deliver supplies in combat. Subsequent reports indicate the unit may have objected to the mission for more tangible reasons than simply fear: Its vehicles were in sorry shape, and it lacked the firepower to survive the mission. Still, the incident has raised alarm from Baghdad to Washington, because such mass disobedience is nearly unheard of in today's all-volunteer U.S. military.
But the U.S. military hasn't always been so free from insubordination. During World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, conscript-based units did precisely what the soldiers of the 343rd allegedly did. The military held 2 million courts-martial in a force of 16 million during World War II, with similar disobedient behavior occupying a significant part of the docket. The similarities between insubordination in past wars and the behavior of the 343rd raise the question: Is there any difference between today's reserve units and the draftee forces of years gone by?
Although American active-duty forces have been driven hard for the past three years in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have also benefited from that combat service. Soldier for soldier, today's combat-hardened force is the best military in the world, largely because of its recent duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The professional active-duty force of today still represents the best argument for why we do not want to resume the draft:A conscript-based force simply can't achieve the skill, unit cohesion, or professionalism of today's active military.
But America's weekend warriors are a different story. The reserves are increasingly taking over the Iraq and Afghanistan missions because of the strain on the active forces. Nearly 400,000 reservists have been mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001, with 158,000 Army and Marine Corps reservists serving on active duty now. The Army has been stretched so thin that it has had to mobilize 5,600 members of its Individual Ready Reserve to fill out its ranks.
The reservists closely resemble the draftees of days gone by. Reservists train for one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer: Thirty-nine days a year is hardly enough to build true tactical competence on the complex tasks of warfighting. Soldiers in logistics units like the 343rd learn how to drive their big rigs and maintain them, but they hardly have time to practice convoy defense or route reconnaissance. The lack of training time is compounded by other resource problems in the reserves. Many reserve leaders don't have significant active-duty experience, so they lack the expertise necessary to train their units on these important missions. Reserve equipment-particularly in the National Guard-suffers from decades of neglect. It is not uncommon for reservists and National Guardsmen to drive vehicles that are older than they are.
When the Army created its "total force concept"-the mix of active and reserve forces it has today-after the Vietnam War, it allocated combat units mostly to the active force, while support and logistics units were put in the reserves. The Army assumed it didn't need highly trained truck drivers on active duty as badly as it needed infantrymen, tankers, and aviators on active duty. The problem with this model in Iraq is that truck drivers are front-line soldiers: A supply convoy driving up the Main Supply Route from Baghdad to Fallujah is as likely to see action as an infantry patrol, if not more so because the insurgents know the convoy is an easier target. Thus, the soldiers in harm's way the most are in many ways the least prepared.
Mass conscription was invented in 1793 by the French Committee of Public Safety
One of the Pentagon's best arguments for rejecting the draft was that it wanted to move away from this style of warfare, where whole divisions of conscripts were thrown into the meat grinder of combat. Today's all-volunteer U.S. military fights differently. Instead of employing pure mass, it uses skill and maneuver and technology to fight, such that it won't have to suffer needless casualties, or even inflict them. Because of this, today's professional force has helped minimize one of the great moral dilemmas of war.
But the unfortunate truth is that today's Guard and reserve units are being thrown into the fight in ways similar to conscript-based units of past generations. Reservists today get mobilized, trained on the most basic tasks of war, and then shipped to Iraq in a matter of weeks. Today, just as in World War II and Korea, we are throwing unprepared units into battle with the hope that they survive and gel as a team in the ultimate Darwinian environment. The reservists in Iraq lack the training, equipment, leadership, and resources to do their job. And their morale proves it; surveys conducted under the Army's auspices last year showed a marked difference between the attitudes of active-duty soldiers and Marines, and of reservists like those in the 343rd.
There remain a number of salient differences between today's soldiers and the draftees of the World War II and Vietnam generations. Unlike conscripts, today's reservists are volunteers, and they have gone through the rigors of boot camp. But from an operational perspective, some of those differences have been slowly ground away by the exigencies of the mission in Iraq. Consequently, reservists today are acting in ways that look startlingly like conscripts of yesterday. The reservists in the 343rd made a conscious choice between the risk of court-martial and the risk of a combat mission, based on their gut feelings about their equipment, training, leadership, and likelihood of survival. Professional soldiers face such risks every day, and yet they persevere because they have faith in their units, leaders, training, and equipment. The reservists of the 343rd Quartermaster Company appear to have run out of faith, perhaps because the Army-which treated them as disposable-never gave them enough reason to have it.
Correction, Oct. 19, 2004: This piece originally stated that Napoleon invented the "leveé en masse." In fact, the Committee of Public Safety invented it; Napoleon is credited with using the leveé en masse to revolutionize warfare. (Return to corrected sentence.)
Phillip Carter is a former U.S. Army officer who now writes on legal and military affairs in Los Angeles. Photograph of U.S. soldier on the Slate home page by Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters.
--------
Iowa police donate body armor to troops
By Associated Press
October 18th, 2004
http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=1037493&l=1&t=Iowa%2B%2F%2BIllinois&c=24,1037493
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - Members of a Missouri Army Reserve unit will have some extra protection while on duty in Iraq thanks to Iowa law enforcement.
The Iowa State Patrol and the Linn County Sheriff's Department have donated outdated body armor to the 189th Ordnance Co. based in St. Joseph, Mo.
``Any added protection is going to be nice,'' said Spec. John Wickman, 26, of Cedar Rapids.
Wickman is among 164 members of the 189th called to active duty in September. His wife, Tina, began working the phones soon after the unit was called up, seeking surplus bulletproof vests from local police.
They responded with more than 200 pieces of body armor.
Wickman and other member of the 189th drove from Fort Sill, Okla., and collected the vests on Sunday at the sheriff's offices in Cedar Rapids.
``They can either wear them or line their vehicles with it,'' said Sheriff Don Zeller.
Body armor must be replaced when its warranty expires after several years, but it's usually sound, said Sheriff's Lt. Ron Cummins. Outdated armor, which can cost up to $500 a set, is usually destroyed.
-------- war crimes
Pentagon Rewards Abu Ghraib Accomplices
TheNewStandard
by Chris Shumway
October 18, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shumway.php?articleid=3806
Instead of reprimands or dismissals, one general tied to the torture and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison will probably receive a promotion and another has been recommended for a new command position. At the same time, both U.S. corporations with direct ties to the abuse scandal have been rewarded with lucrative contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, want to promote Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commanding general of U.S. troops in Iraq, according to "senior defense officials" who spoke to the Los Angeles Times. Investigators have cited Sanchez for creating an environment that contributed to the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.
A fourth star for Sanchez might not come until after the Nov. 2 presidential election, however, because the general is what one source termed politically "radioactive" right now due to his role in the prison abuse and torture scandal. If President Bush is reelected, Rumsfeld, Myers and other top officials at the Pentagon will reportedly push aggressively for Sanchez's promotion.
Meanwhile, the Army's chief of intelligence said this week that he thinks Major General Barbara Fast, formerly the chief military intelligence officer in Iraq, should be put in command of the Army's intelligence school in Arizona. Lieutenant General Keith Alexander told reporters Friday he has "great confidence" in Fast's ability to supervise the training of Army interrogators. The same investigation that cited Sanchez also blamed Fast for failing to properly monitor activities by CIA interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
In the private sector, the U.S. government has awarded lucrative contracts to security technology and mercenary contracting firms tied to the Abu Ghraib scandal by General Antonio Taguba's investigation.
CACI International, which provides interrogators to supplement the US Army's intelligence and counterintelligence operations in Iraq, revealed last week that it has obtained contracts valued at $266 million.
That announcement came less than a month after the U.S. Army awarded a six-month "bridging contract" worth as much as $400 million to Titan Corp., the San Diego-based security firm also tied to the Abu Ghraib abuses. That contract will likely keep Titan's force of over 4,000 translators working in Iraq until September 2005.
Later last month, Titan landed a National Security Agency deal that will rope the publicly traded defense giant another $300 million. On Oct. 1, Titan scored a five-year "indefinite-delivery, indefinit-quantity multiple-award" technical contract from the U.S. Navy valued at over $1 billion. To continue the streak, on Thursday the Navy awarded Titan a separate five-year contract worth $109 million.
Brian Dominick contributed to this piece.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Court to Consider Shackling Defendants
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Shackled-Defendants.html?oref=login
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Convicted double-killer Carman Deck was shackled in leg irons and handcuffed to a chain around his belly when he faced the Missouri jury that would decide his fate. He got the death penalty.
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide if the sentence should be thrown out because the chains made Deck look dangerous to jurors and may have influenced their decision. The court has held that people on trial can be shackled, but only if prosecutors have a strong argument for it. This case involves not the trial, but the sentencing hearing.
Critics of restraints contend that prosecutors try to misuse them to scare juries into sentencing people to death.
``We chain up animals. It's a very deep visceral message,'' said Denise LeBoeuf, director of the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana
Supporters contend that defendants can be dangerous -- especially if they already know they're facing at a minimum life behind bars.
Deck confessed to killing James and Zelma Long in 1996. He went to the elderly couple's door asking for directions, but once inside shot them both twice in the head and stole about $400.
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said Deck has a tough case to make at the court because his innocence is not in question.
He said that the Supreme Court must balance concerns about Deck receiving a fair sentencing hearing with security concerns of states. ``Some defendants do go berserk,'' Scheidegger said.
Courts over the years have taken steps to keep jurors from seeing restrained defendants. Sometimes defendants wear ankle chains attached to a hook on the floor, out of view of jurors. Also, they can wear stun belts that allow a nearby officer to deliver an electric shock if they misbehave.
Deck's attorney, Rosemary Percival, said her client objected that the restraints were visible to the jury. In his appeal, which will be argued at the Supreme Court next spring, she'll claim his constitutional rights were violated.
In his filing with the court, Evan Buchheim, an assistant attorney general in Missouri, told justices that state courts should have flexibility to handle their own safety procedures.
In 1988 the Supreme Court refused to consider a similar case, involving a convicted Florida killer who was put in leg irons during his sentencing trial. An appeals court struck down the sentence, and Florida argued in an appeal that using shackles at sentencing trials -- as opposed to trials on guilt or innocence -- is not inherently prejudicial because jurors already know the defendant is guilty of a violent crime.
Cornell Law School professor Sheri Johnson said that with more televised trials, jurors know that defendants are allowed to wear street clothes and sit in court unrestrained.
``If a defendant were shackled in leg irons and handcuffs, I think that would say to the jury that someone has made the decision that the defendant is dangerous even as he sits here with his life in your hands,'' she said.
The case is Deck v. Missouri, 04-5293.
On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Intelligence reform before election looks unlikely
October 18, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041018-124840-3586r.htm
Lawmakers say they are becoming increasingly skeptical of the chances of harmonizing the House and Senate intelligence reform proposals in time to get a bill on the president's desk before the Nov. 2 elections.
The final text of the Senate bill, incorporating 81 amendments made during floor debate, was delivered to the House late Saturday evening, leading some frustrated House Republicans to accuse their counterparts in the Senate of "slow-walking" the process.
At more than 500 pages, the final Senate bill is about twice the size it was before being amended and contains several little-noticed provisions that might complicate the process of reconciling it with the House version - a procedure undertaken by an ad hoc committee of lawmakers called a conference.
"The complexity and growth in size of the Senate bill, and the fact that it took nearly 11 days to get it here, is going to make it very difficult to finish in time," said conference chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican.
Both bills create the post of a director to oversee the nation's sprawling and variegated intelligence agencies and a center to plan joint counterterror operations involving law-enforcement personnel, intelligence agencies and military power. But the House bill gives much less authority over personnel and budgets to the new director and contains several law-enforcement and immigration provisions not included in the Senate version.
Conferees are scheduled to meet Wednesday, but their staff - who must lay the detailed legislative groundwork - were not able to meet until yesterday afternoon, because of the absence of a complete text of the Senate bill.
"There was nothing to conference before today," said one House Republican staffer involved in the process. "It was very disappointing. The Senate continues to set new records in slow-walking an urgent process."
An aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, said the work had been completed as quickly as possible and denied it was part of any attempt to delay a final vote.
"That's just how long it takes," said the aide. "It's not a political process."
Mr. Hoekstra said conferees and their staff would work as hard as they could, but pointed out that there was little time left.
"We need to get this done by the end of the week," if it is going to reach the president's desk before the election, he said.
Congress would have to be recalled to vote on the final, reconciled legislation, and Mr. Frist has promised lawmakers at least 72 hours to review the bill before voting on it. With some lawmakers in tight re-election contests, recalling Congress after the middle of next week is not a viable option, staff members say.
Mr. Frist told CNN yesterday that the wide differences between the two versions would be resolved "over the next several weeks."
He acknowledged that this meant a final bill "could be before Election Day or it could be after. I would love to have it before."
It is not just the Senate that faces charges of delaying.
"There are signs all over that this is not a substantive process," said the House Republican staffer, citing the absence of any leadership aides at yesterday's staff meeting.
--------
Poll: Antiterror tech plans are flawed
October 18, 2004
Charles Cooper,
CNET News.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1009_3-5401058.html
Americans don't believe the government is doing enough with technology to improve homeland security, according to a national survey conducted jointly by CNET News.com and Harris Interactive.
Drawn from a poll of 1,133 people in late August, the results portray a nation eager to embrace technology to reduce security threats but unsure how best to proceed. Only 15 percent of those polled believe they are safer today than they were a year ago, and just 20 percent predict that they will be safer in the future.
Despite widespread confidence in technology itself, only 45 percent agreed that the government's current technology initiatives are working, according to the survey. The results reflect concerns raised by taxpayer organizations and other government watchdog groups. Such groups have been critical of technology spending and related operations since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
"From the beginning, we were concerned that this reorganization had gone the way of the Department of Energy--bigger bureaucracy and few results to show for it," said Pete Sepp, vice president of the nonprofit National Taxpayer Union. "The picture isn't complete, but the brush strokes we've seen so far are pretty ugly."
The survey indicates that the issue could be a pivotal factor in the elections next month. About 92 percent of the poll's respondents said a presidential candidate's position on security would affect their vote, and 62 percent said they would support a tax increase to pay for new security measures.
The support for security is so strong that the survey's respondents were apparently willing to back measures that have been sharply criticized by civil libertarians as too intrusive. About 53 percent of respondents expressed at least some willingness to repeal certain privacy laws, while 70 percent favored the legalization of more aggressive interrogation methods.
More than 80 percent of respondents indicated a willingness to carry some type of national ID card, and about 70 percent said such a card would be a useful tool to improve security. The poll also revealed support for the greater use of cameras and advanced surveillance technologies in public places, including hand and eye scanners.
Some technology experts attributed the response at least partly to a limited knowledge of technology and what it can accomplish.
"People are putting too much faith in technology," said Bruce Schneier, founder of Counterpane Internet Security. "They don't understand how eye scanners work or how authentication fits into security. They don't understand what a national ID card means or haven't read any of the studies about the effectiveness of security cameras. They're giving opinions based on superstition, not real facts."
Nevertheless, the poll's results seem to reflect a general erosion of public confidence in the federal government, a trend that began decades ago. For homeland security in particular, nearly 53 percent of respondents said the government could do more with the technology it already has.
Zoe Baird, co-chair of the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, said the lack of faith in the government's ability to use technology was understandable, until recently. But she said recent changes in Washington have made her more optimistic.
"Over the last year, the government, at very senior levels, has finally come to terms with how technology can make us safer," Baird said. "I hope that over the course of the next year, the public's faith in government to use technology to make us safer will increase."
Party affiliations of respondents to the CNET News.com-Harris Interactive Poll spanned the political spectrum. About 32 percent said they were Democrats, and roughly 35 percent identified themselves as Republicans. Another 11 percent were registered as independents, and the rest gave no party affiliation.
Other findings in the poll:
• 80 percent expressed varying degrees of support for a closed-border policy.
• 69 percent believe that more security at home would improve the nation's diplomacy.
• 55 percent say press reports exaggerate the threat of terrorism to their security.
This survey was conducted online within the United States between Aug. 25 and Sept. 1 among a nationwide cross-section of 1,133 adults of voting age, all of whom have Internet access. The results carry a statistical sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
--------
Northwest Plane Evacuated in Fargo, N.D.
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Plane-Evacuated.html
FARGO, N.D. (AP) -- A Northwest Airlines plane was evacuated Monday morning at Hector International Airport after a passenger claimed to have overheard someone mention a bomb, police said.
Sgt. Steve Link said the plane's crew was alerted and passengers were told to leave the plane around 5:30 a.m.
The plane was ready to leave for Minneapolis-St. Paul with more than two dozen passengers. They were instead taken to a secure area where they were questioned by local authorities and representatives of the Transportation Security Administration.
-------- human rights
Israeli Security Thrust Flouts Human Rights - - Group
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-rights-mideast-gaza.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A U.S. human rights watchdog accused Israel on Monday of exaggerating the threat posed by Palestinian arms-smuggling tunnels to justify a military thrust into a Gaza refugee camp that has left thousands homeless.
Human Rights Watch said Israeli forces had trampled on international law by razing swathes of Rafah to broaden a buffer zone along Gaza's border with Egypt and by carrying out raids that had killed many civilians as well as militants.
``Expansion of the patrol corridor has brought Israeli army fortifications closer to the camp, exposing them to risks subsequently invoked to justify further demolitions,'' the group said in a study released at a news conference.
Israel has said that it has flattened houses hiding more than 90 tunnels or serving as gun nests in Rafah over the past four years of a Palestinian revolt waged by militants.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees put the number of Rafah residents made homeless by demolitions at 16,000, a fifth of the population in the violence-ridden camp.
The Israeli army recently recommended doubling the breadth of the buffer strip to 1,000 feet.
Human Rights Watch, in a 133-page report quoting interviews with scores of Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians in the region, said most of the roughly 1,600 demolitions of homes in Rafah were not warranted by ``military necessity.''
It said army officers acknowledged to its researchers that the figure of 90 included entrance shafts, some of which led to existing tunnels and others to nothing at all. ``We concluded that the army has consistently exaggerated and mischaracterized the threat from tunnels to justify demolitions,'' the prominent New York-based group said.
``The pattern of destruction strongly suggests Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat, in violation of international law.''
ISRAEL DEFENDS TACTICS
In response, Israel's Foreign Ministry said soldiers did their utmost to avoid harming Palestinian civilians but suggested this was not always possible.
``We are operating against terrorist infrastructures set up within residential areas and attacking us from there,'' spokesman David Saranga said. The army declined immediate comment.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to evacuate 8,000 Jewish settlers from occupied Gaza and a few from the larger West Bank next year to ``disengage'' from Palestinians.
But he aims to hold onto the Rafah corridor, established under the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, until Israel judges Egypt capable of blocking smuggling to militants.
``Israel's inherently expansive notion of security is consistent with a goal of having a wide and empty border area to facilitate long-term control over the Gaza Strip,'' Human Rights Watch said. ``It is a recipe for ongoing demolitions.''
The report said Israel could use ``non-destructive'' tactics such as installing underground seismic sensors along the border like those that detect tunnelling into the United States by illegal migrants from Mexico.
``Israel risks jeopardising international support when it uses its legitimate security needs as a pretext to engage in gratuitous destruction,'' Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth told Reuters. ``With this report we hope both to stop such practices or encourage international steps to stop them.''
The study said Israel's approach to Rafah was highlighted by a massive raid in May in which 42 Palestinians were killed and hundreds displaced by demolitions after five soldiers died in a troop carrier blown up by militants.
--------
Group: Israel Violating International Law
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-House-Demolitions.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel has violated international law by systematically destroying Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah in a bid to create a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, according to a human rights report released Monday.
The Human Rights Watch report also accused the Israeli military of exaggerating the threat posed by weapons-smuggling tunnels running from Rafah to Egypt -- the main justification for the home demolitions.
``We've seen the piece by piece destruction of up to 10 percent of Rafah,'' said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based group.
Since fighting began four years ago, some 16,000 people have been made homeless in Rafah, many of them during an army incursion in May, the report said. Roth called the destruction gratuitous and said the army was retaliating for the killings of five soldiers on the road along the border.
The army, which declined to comment on the report, says the demolitions were needed to prevent Palestinian militants from smuggling arms through tunnels. Also, the houses provide gunmen with cover to attack troops.
``Neither excuse could justify the wholesale destruction in Rafah,'' Roth said.
The 135-page report says security considerations are secondary to Israel's desire for a large clear border area to ``facilitate long-term control over the Gaza Strip.''
``The pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat,'' the report said. It said the findings were based on tours of the area and satellite imagery.
The military mind-set ``is based on the assumption that every Palestinian is a potential suicide bomber and every home a potential base for attack,'' the report said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman David Saranga said the army makes every effort to limit harm to the Palestinians and accused the militants of using civilians as a cover to launch attacks. He refused to address specific charges in the report but said Israel would study it.
The report said Israel has violated international law by failing to distinguish between civilians and combatants and has not lived up to its responsibilities as an occupying power to protect civilians.
It also accused Israel of exaggerating the threat of the weapons-smuggling tunnels, which Israel has called the lifeline of Palestinian militants in Gaza.
The report, citing military experts, said the army has failed to use counter-tunnel measures employed elsewhere, including at the U.S.-Mexican border and the Korean demilitarized zone. Israel could use underground seismic sensors, electromagnetic induction and ground penetrating radar to detect the tunnels, the report said.
By demolishing the homes, the army is only destroying entrance shafts and not the tunnels themselves, allowing the Palestinians to dig new entrances, the report said.
-------- police
Police Show Strain From Endless Alerts
Blue Flu Outbreak, Costs Raise Worries
By Sari Horwitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40434-2004Oct17?language=printer
The first call came in to the U.S. Capitol early in the morning. A Capitol Police officer was too sick to work. Soon, another officer called with the same problem. Then another. And another. By the end of the Columbus Day weekend, more than 70 officers charged with protecting Congress had called in sick.
It was the largest number of Capitol Police officers who ever had "banged in." Many of them say they really were sick -- an illness brought on by fatigue. The continual elevated terror alerts have meant weeks and weeks of 12-hour shifts, little vacation and fewer days off. When Congress decided to stay in session rather than adjourn for the holiday weekend, it was, for many, the last straw.
"The officers are extremely fatigued. They're really stressed out," said U.S. Capitol Police Officer Andy Maybo, chairman of the police union, which did not organize or support the action.
It's not just the Capitol Police. All across the country, but especially in Washington and New York, police officers and federal agents say the heightened alert and the strain of working long hours with no end in sight are taking their toll. Experts on policing, police chiefs and the officers themselves wonder whether the law enforcement agencies can sustain the current staffing levels without a general change in policy by government agencies that would provide some financial and manpower relief.
"It is a real challenge to balance legitimate security needs against the economics of what's possible," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank that helps large police departments. "They have to be more sensitive to the diminishing returns of keeping officers on extended overtime without resting them. Police chiefs are going to have to be more strategic."
The chiefs also have to worry about how to pay their bills. For some, that means asking the federal government to help pay for the vigilance.
"We have been making the case to our congressional leaders that New York, along with Washington, deserves special attention when it comes to federal counterterrorism funding," New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday in a speech to Army War College students.
Nowhere do the effects of the heightened alerts seem more apparent than in Kelly's city and the Washington area, where law enforcement agencies are spending millions of dollars in overtime and ramping up their counterterrorism efforts in the weeks before the Nov. 2 election. The summer political conventions threat has turned into a general pre-election threat, which is morphing into a threat against January's presidential inauguration, and police officials see no relief ahead.
Law enforcement officials and agency heads said that with the constant alerts, they will do what they have to do to keep the country safe, even when it means canceling annual leave or extending their officers' shifts.
Gary Hankins, president of a Washington consulting firm for police unions, said the result could be more fatigue like what occurred at the Capitol over the Columbus Day weekend.
"The human mind and body were not created to sustain a continuous heightened alert," said Hankins, who headed the D.C. police union for 12 years. "You need to significantly expand the number of people you have performing the services."
Inside the FBI's Washington field office, agents who are already juggling day-to-day threats and intelligence tips also have swung into high gear to plan for the extraordinarily tight security and massive manpower needed for the January inauguration -- the first since the 2001 terror attacks.
"It's rough," said Paul A. Garten, a supervisory special agent of Washington's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which investigates all possible terrorist acts in the District and Virginia.
Three years ago, members of the task force, composed of local and federal law enforcement agencies, had not even finished writing their reports on the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon when anthrax was discovered on Capitol Hill. Ever since, they have run out every day to investigate thousands of reports of suspicious packages and powder.
"It seems like right now we're in the middle of a long haul," Garten said. "And it is unrelenting."
Wexler, whose group has studied Israeli counterterrorism techniques, said that although the Israeli police have learned how to stay on heightened alert, this state of vigilance is still "a relatively new phenomenon in this country."
"In Jerusalem, the police get hundreds of bomb calls a day and have been on heightened alert for years," he said. "With alerts that last days and months, every police chief in America is now being faced with a real dilemma with limited resources."
The Capitol Police and other D.C. area police agencies are at the center of that dilemma. On their 12-hour shifts, Capitol officers patrol the grounds, stop cars and trucks at roadblocks and use explosives-sniffing dogs to conduct hundreds of other inspections a day at congressional buildings. At the same time, FBI agents across the Washington region are interviewing Muslim businessmen and activists, Department of Homeland Security agents are stepping up investigations of immigrants and Metro Transit Police officers are patrolling the subway and warning riders to look for suspicious packages and passengers.
Along with the issues of morale and effectiveness are the ballooning costs. In fiscal 2001, New York City spent $200,000 on police overtime for antiterrorism. According to the New York City Independent Budget Office, it costs $500,000 each week to maintain the current terror alert. New York officials said the heightened alert is built into their policing policy and strategy now, but the costs are daunting.
"The city is facing a $3 billion deficit next year, and we are spending money we don't have because Congress hasn't come through for New York," said Ed Skyler, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R).
In Washington, the Capitol Police spend about $1.5 million in overtime every two weeks.
The latest round of 12-hour shifts for the Capitol Police began after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the alert level in August for financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer closed streets on Capitol Hill to protect lawmakers and staff members from a possible truck or car bomb. He set up a dozen checkpoints to inspect vehicles. And he ordered the officers in his approximately 1,600-member department to cancel their leave and begin the longer shifts. Many have had to work six-day weeks, but Gainer, who has received high marks from his officers, is now trying to give most of them two days off each week, Maybo said.
Last month, Gainer ordered many of his officers to begin wearing new equipment to protect them from a biological or chemical attack.
"We truly ask a lot of these guys," Gainer said. "Be sharp, give directions, smile all the time they're doing it and be ready to fall on a hand grenade."
Gainer recently brought his officers together for an intelligence briefing and a pep talk about their role in the nation's safety.
"The days and nights are long, but I told them they are not nearly as long and hot and dangerous as for our countrymen serving in Afghanistan and Iraq," Gainer said.
"The nation is at war. We have a piece of it, and we have to grin and bear our portion."
But on the holiday weekend, a large group of officers decided they had borne enough.
"I was disappointed," Gainer said. "I know that holiday weekend everyone was prepared for less work, but it was disconcerting that an inordinate number did not come in."
U.S. Park Police officers also are weary from constantly working longer shifts under the heightened terrorism alerts, officers said.
Park Police officers, charged with protecting the nation's monuments on and around the Mall, or what they call the icons, also have worked 12-hour days. Park Police Officer Jim Austen said the officers are starting to get some relief in their schedules but are "burned out."
Each police chief is handling the heightened alerts differently. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey put his officers on 12-hour shifts with no days off for several weeks right after Sept. 11, 2001. But he said recent intelligence briefings have not convinced him that he needs the longer shifts and reduced time off.
Ramsey said that if the intelligence becomes more specific and imminent, he won't hesitate to take the same steps as the Capitol Police.
"I'll go to 12 hours or longer than that in a heartbeat if I have to," Ramsey said. "We'll cancel days off or leave. We'll do whatever we have to. This is the new normal."
At the same time, Ramsey said, big-city police departments are struggling to strike a balance between responding to terrorism and protecting the public from other social ills.
"I deal with day-to-day crime in addition to terrorist threat," Ramsey said. "I've got to be able to do both."
With a constant barrage of new intelligence from the CIA and other sources, though, sustainability has become the watchword.
"This is a threat with no end in sight," Wexler said.
Staff writers Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia in New York and Mary Beth Sheridan in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Troopers train with non-lethal weapon
rutlandherald
By Alan J. Keays
October 18, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041018/NEWS/410180364/1002
Vermont State Police have added a stunning new weapon to their arsenal.
Two troopers in Rutland are among the approximately 15 officers now trained to carry Tasers.
Douglas Lynn and Andrew Campagne started carrying the devices last week.
"I feel lucky that I have another tool at my disposal," Campagne said.
Both troopers have the Tasers on their hip attached to their belts. Their training included the two troopers each getting zapped.
Campagne said a probe was attached to his chest and foot. He was then hit was 5-second dose of 50,000 volts.
"It was the most excruciating pain I've ever experienced," the trooper said, adding that he was rapidly back on his feet and able to recover. "It's very quick."
Campagne and Lynn are part the State Police tactical support unit - the SWAT team. The team is made up of up to 15 troopers from across the state who all recently received training in Taser technology.
Lynn and Campagne are the only two troopers in the Rutland barracks who are part of the tactical team.
The Tasers look like a standard firearm and are made to shoot aggressive offenders with bursts of electricity rather than bullets. Tasers are also popularly known as "stun guns." The old-style Tasers required officers using them to be close enough to a suspect to touch the offender with the device.
Troopers can still press the open end of the Taser against an offender and pull the trigger, launching a 5-second burst of 50,000 volts. In addition, the devices are now fitted with a cartridge that when fired shoot a pair nitrogen-propelled barbs. The darts trail a 21-foot copper wire, carrying the electric charge.
The charge results in the loss of voluntary muscle control, typically leading a person to fall to the ground or freeze in a spot.
Campagne said the effects are instantaneous, with the jolt lasting long enough to temporarily incapacitate dangerous offenders, giving officers a chance to safely subdue a subject.
"It's another tool for the troopers," said Lt. Donald Patch, who oversees the Rutland barracks.
Patch added that all Taser uses will be reviewed by superiors to ensure that use of the weapon was necessary.
Campagne said the pain from the Taser was worst then getting pepper spray in the face.
He said deciding whether to use pepper spray or a Taser on an offender will depend on the situation.
One major difference with the Taser from pepper-spray is that once the burst is over the pain comes to an end, Campagne said. Also, nothing has to be washed out the eyes, he said.
Patch said several police departments across the country, especially in the West, have Tasers as part of their arsenals. However, they are new to Vermont State Police.
"Right now, it's kind of a test period," he said.
Patch and Campagne said they were one of a couple of local police departments in the state using Tasers. Rutland City Police and deputies with the Rutland County Sheriff's Department are not armed with Tasers.
Patch said the devices allow troopers the ability to stop offenders without the use of deadly force and with less risk to the officers. It also permits troopers to make confrontations safer, allowing troopers to engage potential dangerous offenders from a distance of up to 21 feet, he said.
However, the Tasers will not take the place of a gun when a trooper's life is at stake, Patch said.
"It doesn't replace deadly force if somebody is coming at you with gun," he said.
Contact Alan J. Keays at alan.keays@rutlandherald.com.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Ex-Gitmo detainees return to terror
October 18, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041018-124854-2279r.htm
At least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence.
At least two are believed to have died in fighting in Afghanistan, and a third was recaptured during a raid on a suspected training camp in Afghanistan, said Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman. Others are at large.
Additional former detainees have expressed a desire to rejoin the fight, be it against U.N. peacekeepers in Afghanistan, Americans in Iraq or Russians in Chechnya.
U.S. officials released 146 detainees from Guantanamo, but only after determining the prisoners no longer posed threats and had no remaining intelligence value.
Pentagon officials acknowledged that the release process is imperfect, but they said most of the Guantanamo detainees released have steered clear of Islamist insurgent groups.
The number returning to the fight demonstrates the delicate balance the United States must strike between minimizing the appearance of holding people unjustly and keeping those who are legitimate long-term threats, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Human rights groups frequently criticize the Defense Department for holding hundreds of prisoners at the naval base, largely without charges or legal counsel. Many have been held for more than two years; only a few have been charged.
Another 57 Guantanamo prisoners have been transferred to the custody of their home governments, including 29 to Pakistan, seven to Russia, five each to Morocco, and four each to France and Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon did not identify the seven detainees believed to have returned to fighting, although a few names have been made public. One released detainee killed a judge leaving a mosque in Afghanistan, Cmdr. Plexico said.
The former prisoners who returned to terrorism include Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee linked to al Qaeda who oversaw the recent kidnapping of two Chinese engineers, one of whom was killed.
On Friday, Pakistani soldiers began a massive search for Mehsud, 28, who returned to Pakistan in March after about two years' detention at Guantanamo. Pakistan officials say he has forged ties with al Qaeda since then.
One of the two former prisoners killed is Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar, a senior Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan who was arrested about two months after a U.S.-led coalition drove the militia from power in late 2001.
He was held at Guantanamo for eight months, then released, and was killed on Sept. 26 by Afghan security forces during a raid in Uruzgan province. Afghan leaders said they believed he was leading Taliban forces in the southern province.
Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the No. 2 commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, told the Associated Press this month that there was no alternative to releasing prisoners.
"It's not going to be perfect, so [the Ghaffar case] has not led to any soul-searching about the release program," Gen. Olson said. Other former prisoners have said publicly that they wanted to return to the fight.
In Denmark, Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, 31, who was released in February from the U.S. naval base on Cuba's southeastern tip, said he would go to Chechnya to fight with rebels there against Russia.
"The Muslims are oppressed in Chechnya, and the Russians are carrying out terror against them," the Dane, who has an Algerian father, told Danish television in September.
Abderrahmane, who was never charged in Denmark upon his return, later backtracked.
--------
Ex-Guantánamo Bay workers claim prisoner abuse was widespread
The Guardian
Julian Borger
October 18, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1329810,00.html
The abusive treatment of inmates at Guantánamo Bay was far more widespread than the Pentagon has admitted, according to a new report published yesterday.
Many detainees at the US prison camp were "regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment" over a long period of time, far beyond the isolated cases that have been acknowledged to date, according to the report, which appeared in the New York Times.
It quoted sources who once worked at the naval base and who were angry at the treatment dealt out to the prisoners, suspected terrorists from around the world who have been held without charge, most for more than two years.
The harsh treatment was intended to persuade inmates to talk, and was matched by incentives to co-operate.
One "regular procedure" was making prisoners strip to their underwear, sit on a chair while their hands and feet were shackled to a bolt on the ground, while they were subjected to strobe lights, loud music (reportedly by Limp Bizkit, Rage Against The Machine and Eminem) and cold. Such sessions could go on for up to 14 hours, with a few breaks.
"It fried them," one official was quoted as saying. Another said: "They were very wobbly. They came back to their cells and were completely out of it."
Responding to the report, a Pentagon spokesman, Major Paul Swiergosz, said yesterday: "We take all allegations of detainee abuse seriously, and ... we've directed several enquiries to be conducted into a number of allegations."
He pointed to an earlier Pentagon statement stating that: "Guantánamo guards provide an environment that is stable, secure, safe and humane. And it is that environment that sets the conditions for interrogators to work successfully and to gain valuable information from detainees because they have built a relationship of trust, not fear." Advertiser links Open a High Interest Saving Account
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Following the revelations earlier this year that torture was used by US military guards at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the US military held enquiries, which found that a number of harsh interrogation techniques had been approved for use in Guantánamo by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, but that they were rarely used.
The New York Times allegations suggest instead that the procedures used went beyond those guidelines, which allow interrogators to place detainees "in a setting that may be less comfortable" but should not "constitute a substantial change in environmental quality".
Yesterday's report quoted an intelligence official as saying that much of the harshest interrogation was focused on a "dirty thirty" of detainees, thought to represent the best potential sources of intelligence on al-Qaida.
However, other reports have suggested that very little, if any, "actionable" intelligence has emerged from the more than 600 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, scores of whom have since been transferred to their home countries without charges.
High level al-Qaida captives, like Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, and Abu Zubaidah have been held at secret locations in allied countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Human rights group allege that these high-value prisoners are being held outside US territory to avoid legal obstacles to the use of torture.
One military official said yesterday it was not clear when the sources quoted in the report worked at Guantánamo Bay, suggesting that procedures had recently improved. "There has been - after detainee abuse allegations, - a number of reviews, so it is important what period is being talked about," the official said.
-------- terrorism
Zarqawi militia joining al Qaeda
October 18, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20041017-111445-8628r.htm
BAGHDAD - The most feared militant group in Iraq, led by terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi, declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden yesterday, saying it had agreed with al Qaeda over strategy and the need for unity against "the enemies of Islam."
The declaration, which began with a Koranic verse encouraging Muslim unity, said Zarqawi considered bin Laden "the best leader for Islam's armies against all infidels and apostates."
It said the two had been in communication eight months ago and that "viewpoints were exchanged" before the dialogue was interrupted.
"God soon blessed us with a resumption in communication, and the dignified brothers in al Qaeda understood the strategy of Tawhid and Jihad," the statement said.
The statement affirmed the "allegiance of Tawhid and Jihad's leadership and soldiers to the chief of all fighters, Osama bin Laden." It said the announcement had been timed for the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when "Muslims need more than ever to stick together in the face of the religion's enemies."
The Jordanian-born Zarqawi is suspected in about a dozen high-profile attacks in Iraq, including a bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last year, and the beheading of numerous foreign hostages.
U.S. and Iraqi officials think Zarqawi's movement is centered in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. However, Tawhid and Jihad banners have been seen recently in Samarra, Ramadi and even on the streets of Baghdad.
The announcement was made as Zarqawi was indicted in his native Jordan with 12 other Muslim suspects on charges of plotting a chemical attack that could have killed thousands of people.
Zarqawi and three of the suspects will be tried in absentia on charges including conspiring to commit terrorism, possessing and manufacturing explosives and affiliation with a banned group, according to the 24-page indictment.
The indictment said Zarqawi sent more than $118,000 to buy two vehicles that would be driven into Jordan's General Intelligence Department by suicide bombers armed with explosives and chemicals.
The indictment said the defendants had collected geographical data indicating that thousands of people would be killed in the chemical blast.
-------- POLITICS
Sweeping win for Belarus leader
bbc
18 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3736312.stm
A controversial referendum in Belarus has approved the lifting of a constitutional ban on a third term for President Alexander Lukashenko.
The EU and US have questioned whether Sunday's poll was free and fair.
Belarus' electoral commission head said preliminary results showed President Lukashenko had won 77.3% of the votes and the turnout was nearly 90%.
But an independent survey suggested Mr Lukashenko may not have gathered enough votes to change the constitution.
The poll, commissioned by the Baltic service of Gallup, said that if official turnout figures were taken into consideration less than the required 50% of the electorate could have voted yes.
Alongside the referendum, Belarus was also electing a new lower chamber of parliament - the House of Representatives.
Final results are expected later on Monday.
Irregularities
On Sunday, the BBC was shown what appeared to be evidence of irregularities in the voting.
A series of photographs from one polling station showed ballot papers which had already been marked with ticks beside Mr Lukashenko's name before they had been handed out to voters.
In one photo an elderly woman was given a marked ballot on arrival. Another image shows further ballots on a table with boxes already ticked.
The head of the Belarussian electoral commission said the allegations were false, but the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the elections, say they are investigating the claims.
Other reports said police had detained a number of people conducting an independent exit poll.
Western criticism
The website of the Belarus human rights group Charter 97 said the authorities had "rigged the referendum and the elections".
"Not a single democratic candidate has made it into parliament," it said.
It urged Belarussians to attend a protest rally in Minsk on Monday evening.
Earlier, the US State Department expressed "serious doubts" that the vote would meet international democratic standards.
Correspondents say the ex-Soviet republic has become ever more isolated under Mr Lukashenko, in power now for a decade.
Mr Lukashenko's rule has been characterised by the closure of opposition media outlets and the prosecution of opponents.
With the next presidential election due to fall in 2006, he claims that a third term is for the good of the nation, but his opponents have accused him of trying to become Belarus' leader for life.
The current constitution limits the president to two terms in office, but he has already once extended his rule by means of a referendum. In 1996 he prolonged his first five-year term by two years, to 2001.
He was then re-elected for another five years, in a poll which was criticised as undemocratic by Western observers.
------
Belarus Says Vote Allows President to Run Again
Associated Press
By Mara D. Bellaby
October 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40500-2004Oct17?language=printer
MINSK, Belarus, Oct. 18 -- Belarusans voted in favor of scrapping presidential term limits, the Central Elections Commission chief said Monday, citing partial results. Ending the limits would allow the country's authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, to seek a new term in 2006.
Opposition leaders said the vote was rigged in order to allow Lukashenko, often branded as Europe's last dictator, to stay in power. He has led the former Soviet republic since 1994.
The chairwoman of the election commission, Lidiya Ermoshina, said partial results from all districts showed that voters were approving the referendum. She did not give an overall figure and said the percentage of ballots counted in various districts ranged from 30 percent to 60 percent.
A final tally was expected later Monday.
Controversy arose after a government-endorsed exit poll was released showing the measure passing, while polls were still open. Under Belarusan law, the results of exit polls cannot be announced until after voting ends to avoid influencing voters who have not cast their ballots.
State television broadcast the exit poll results throughout the day, and Ermoshina insisted election law had not been violated.
The European Union and the United States had previously expressed strong doubts that the vote, in which Belarusans also cast ballots to fill the largely powerless 110-seat House of Representatives, would meet democratic standards.
Election officials said turnout in the capital, Minsk, was 81.62 percent. They said they did not have data for the rest of Belarus.
Lukashenko, 50, whose second term expires in September 2006, has not said whether he would run again, but he is widely seen as wanting to hold on to power.
"Turn to your own problems and resolve those," Lukashenko said of the West on Sunday. "You don't need to worry so much about us."
At a polling station in Minsk, many voters expressed dismay at Lukashenko's move to stay in power by changing the constitution.
"I saw them on television every night telling me to be a patriot and make the right choice," said 40-year-old Nikolai Glozkov. "I am a patriot, but right now our country is standing in place and not moving forward, so I voted against."
Yulia, 42, who declined to give her last name, cast a "yes" vote in the village of Zhukov Lug. "We support Lukashenko. Why shouldn't we? Life is getting better," she said.
A journalist for Russia's Channel One television, who had co-written a book critical of Lukashenko, was found badly beaten at a Minsk hospital late Sunday, hours after police detained him after accusations that he had attacked two people outside a cafe, said opposition journalist Svetlana Kalinkina.
The journalist, Pavel Sheremet, previously worked in Belarus's opposition media and had spent months in jail for his reporting. The Interfax news agency cited Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov as saying he was detained Sunday for hooliganism, but Kalinkina said he was attacked.
--------
Dalai Lama says Tibet is better off within China
19 October 2004
independent.co.uk
By Justin Huggler in Delhi
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=573564
Tibet would be better off to remain within China rather than regain its independence, the Dalai Lama has told an interviewer. "Tibet is backward," the exiled spiritual leader said. "It's a big land, rich in natural resources, but we lack the technology or expertise [to exploit them]. So, if we remain in China, we might get a greater benefit, provided it respects our culture and environment and gives us some kind of guarantee."
The Dalai Lama's remarks were made to a journalist from Time magazine, just weeks after he sent a delegation of envoys to Tibet to discuss his possible return. Western diplomats believe there is a new opportunity for rapprochement under the new Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, with the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government-in-exile .
The Dalai Lama gave up his struggle for full independence for Tibet at the end of the 1980s, but his latest remarks are particularly conciliatory, and will be seen as evidence of progress in talks with Chinese authorities. "Some Tibetans accuse me of selling out their right to independence, but my approach is in our interest," the Dalai Lama said at his home in McLeod Ganj, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
After China occupied Tibet in 1951, the Dalai Lama became the leader of the Tibetan struggle for independence, fleeing in 1959 along with tens of thousands of his supporters after a failed uprising. He set up a government-in-exile in Dhar-amsala in India. For many years, Tibet was a celebrated cause in the West, and supporters flocked to Dharamsala from around the world.
But with China's growing power, Tibet has faded from the international conscience, and the Dalai Lama has moderated demands from independence to some form of autonomy that will safeguard Tibet's culture and allow Tibetans to follow their traditional Buddhist religion. "Many communist and authoritarian regimes have changed, including the Soviet Union, not by force but by their own people," the Dalai Lama told Time. "China [still has] the same system but much is changing. Freedom of information, religious freedom and freedom of the press are much better. On that level the situation in Tibet is hopeful."
But he was not entirely optimistic. "Despite some economic improvement and development, the threats to our cultural heritage, religious freedom and environment are serious. In the countryside, facilities in education and health are very, very poor."
On the prospect of improving relations with Beijing, he sought to play down expectations. "We're not expecting some major breakthrough; the Tibetan issue is very complicated, and China is over-suspicious. It will take time."
Among other concerns, the Tibetan government-in-exile is believed to be seeking assurances from China that the Dalai Lama would be allowed to live in the Potala Palace in Tibet, and not be kept a virtual prisoner in Beijing.
They also want the Dalai Lama to be given full control over the publication and editing of religious texts, and authority over the appointment of abbots for monasteries.
The Dalai Lama also wants undisputed authority to supervise the choice of new incarnations of living Buddhas. At the age of 69, his thoughts have clearly turned to his own successor. "The institution of the Dalai Lama, and whether it should continue, is up to the Tibetan people," he said. "If they feel it is not relevant, then it will cease. But if I die today, I think they will want another Dalai Lama.
"Will the Chinese accept this? [No,] the Chinese government most probably will appoint another Dalai Lama, like it did with the Panchen Lama. Then there will be two Dalai Lamas, one the Dalai Lama of the Tibetan heart, and one that is officially appointed."
-------- budget
Bush Signs $33 Billion Security Budget
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Homeland-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush signed legislation Monday that gives the Department of Homeland Security about $33 billion to shore up the nation's borders, inspect incoming cargo, protect potential terror targets and train first responders.
Bush signed the bill before leaving the White House for New Jersey, where he delivered a campaign speech in which he attacked Democratic Sen. John Kerry on a wide range of national security questions.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and members of Congress were among those looking on for the brief Oval Office signing ceremony open only to news photographers.
Later, speaking in Marlton, N.J., Bush said the law will improve national security by through outlays for port security, Coast Guard patrols, the federal air marshal program, anti-missile technology for aircraft, foreign visitor inspections and security at chemical facilities, nuclear plants, water-treatment plants, bridges, subways and tunnels.
The ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security said Bush has done too little to secure the nation. Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, cited deficiencies in the inspection of cargo for nuclear and radiological material, the lack of a comprehensive terrorist watch list and the small percentage of airplane cargo that is screened for explosives.
``The truth of the matter is that the administration is not doing everything it can and should be doing to protect the homeland,'' Turner said.
The committee's chairman, Christopher Cox, R-Calif., countered: ``Instead of making partisan attacks, it is time for Democrats to check the facts. Today, America is safer than it has ever been before.''
The $33 billion measure, almost $900 million more than Bush had proposed, finances the Department of Homeland Security for the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
It cuts spending for police and emergency responders from last year's levels by about $500 million, to $3.6 billion for police and other emergency responders. The measure also provides $5.1 billion for the Transportation Security Administration, which is required to triple in the next year the amount of cargo inspected on passenger airliners.
-------- us politics
S.C. hopefuls vow to fully arm troops
October 18, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041018-124849-5560r.htm
COLUMBIA, S.C. - The two candidates vying to fill South Carolina's open Senate seat both pledged yesterday to fully arm U.S. troops in Iraq, as the Army investigates the refusal of a South Carolina-based platoon to go on a convoy mission because its trucks were unarmored.
Rep. Jim DeMint said the refusal of the 18 reservists in the 343rd Quartermaster Company last week to deliver fuel in trucks they considered unsafe illustrates the need for sufficient equipment to win the war.
But Mr. DeMint, a Republican, questioned the support of his opponent, Democrat Inez Tenenbaum, for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, who voted against a bill in the Senate last year seeking $87 billion in funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It does bring out how important it is that we give the president the money to have the equipment, resources, the body armor," Mr. DeMint, a three-term congressman, said during a debate with Mrs. Tenenbaum yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"And that's one of the reasons that we have to worry about my opponent's support of John Kerry, because that is exactly the problem we're having," he added.
Mrs. Tenenbaum, the state's education superintendent, said she disagrees with Mr. Kerry's vote on the funding bill and said President Bush was right to oust Saddam Hussein, even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found.
"We needed to remove Saddam Hussein. He had killed thousands of people. He had had weapons of mass destruction that he used against the Kurds and the Iranians. He had invaded Kuwait. He tried to assassinate a United States president," she said.
If elected, Mrs. Tenenbaum also said she would fight to give the troops the equipment they need.
The candidates are in a tight race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, who has held the seat for nearly 40 years.
Mr. DeMint is considered the front-runner, but he has watched the polls tighten in recent weeks after saying that homosexuals and unwed, pregnant women are unfit to be public-school teachers.
He refused yesterday to answer whether he stood by those comments. Instead, he apologized again for talking about an issue that he said should be left up to local school boards.
Mrs. Tenenbaum has called Mr. DeMint's comments un-American.
Mr. DeMint also stood by his proposal to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for a national sales tax. He said he would support exceptions or refunds to help low-income people pay the tax on food and other goods.
--------
Sept. 11 widows slam Bush's anti-terror record
(AFP)
Oct 18, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1963&e=16&u=/afp/20041018/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_attacks_widows_041018173029&sid=96378801
WASHINGTON - A group of widows of September 11 victims slammed President George W. Bush's record against terrorism, accusing the US leader of making the United States less safe and of bringing terrorism to Iraq.
"He has made us less secure," said Monica Gabrielle, a member of the widows' group, which is supporting Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry in the November 2 election.
"There are many things that have not been done here at home which could have been," she said in a telephone conference with reporters. "This president had three years with the Republican Congress to get so much more done to make us safer."
Gabrielle decried what she called Bush's "stubborn arrogance."
"How can we trust you to lead us in the future when you have failed so poorly in the past?" asked another widow, Mindy Kleinberg.
"Now we brought the terrorism to Iraq," said a third widow, Lorie Van Auken. "The terrorists that we create today may come back to attack our children tomorrow."
The group endorsed Kerry last month and decried Bush's response to the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
-------- voting
Colorado combats voter fraud
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Valerie Richardson
October 18, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041018-124856-1311r.htm
DENVER - Colorado officials yesterday brainstormed about how to ensure a fair, clean election in the wake of widespread accusations of voter-registration fraud.
"There is some evidence of fraud in these voter-registration drives," Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, said after a meeting with the state's top elections clerks and district attorneys. "What this meeting is about is trying to make sure there's no fraud on Election Day."
With just two weeks before the Nov. 2 election, the state has been rocked by evidence that some voter-registration drives have submitted applications with forged signatures. In other cases, would-be voters have applied to vote as many as 40 times.
At the same time, some registration drives have collected applications and then failed to submit them by the Oct. 4 deadline, prompting Secretary of State Donetta Davidson to announce the use of provisional ballots last week.
At yesterday's meeting with county clerks and district attorneys, Mrs. Davidson announced procedures for accepting provisional ballots, which are issued to people who say they have registered but whose names fail to appear on the voter roll.
Such ballots would be marked "VRD," for "Voter Registration Drive." The would-be voter would have to produce identification and tell when and where they registered. The ballot later would be checked against the state's voter databases.
Critics have warned that allowing provisional ballots could invite attempts at multiple voting and other fraud, but state elections officials insisted that the state has long allowed emergency registrations on Election Day.
"These vehicles have always been here, so we're not doing something totally different," said state elections official Drew Durham.
Mrs. Davidson also sought to assuage fears of massive fraud by pointing out that it was county clerks who had flagged the most egregious cases appearing in recent press accounts.
"When people are told there are hundreds of these cases, they don't realize that they were all caught by the clerk and recorder and never made it through the system," Mrs. Davidson said.
Most clerks and lawyers at the meeting chalked up the fraud to overzealous registration workers trying to earn some extra cash. Several of the state's independent voter-registration groups paid their workers $2 per application and set goals of 10 applications per hour.
Carole Snyder, the Adams County clerk and recorder, said she received 42 applications for the same would-be voter. Her office flagged the excess applications, each of which contained the same information, and pared it down to one.
"Those are not really what I call fraudulent, but are really just a pain in the neck," Mrs. Snyder said.
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Linda Salas said some people register repeatedly not with the intent to vote more than once, but rather as Election Day insurance.
"A lot of times, people are registering several times because, 'Oh, I can't remember if I registered,' or 'Maybe I should do it again, just to be sure,' " Mrs. Salas said.
The clerks are referring cases that appear to be blatant fraud, such as forged signatures, to the county attorneys. Bill Ritter, the Denver district attorney, said his office received 69 such cases from the county clerk last week.
But he said he saw no pattern of a conspiracy to commit election fraud.
"We are not seeing some scam where people are trying to corrupt the process," Mr. Ritter said. "We're seeing people who are motivated by greed or laziness."
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
FedEx to Build 2nd - Largest U.S. Private Solar System
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-transport-solar-fedex.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - FedEx Corp. (FDX.N), the world's largest air-express shipper, on Monday said it was building the nation's second largest private solar power system atop its hub in Oakland, California.
The 904-kilowatt system will be second in size only to Fala Direct Marketing's solar system in Long Island, New York, which is 1.02 megawatts. FedEx's project, to be built at its hub at Oakland's international airport, is scheduled to begin operations in May, 2005.
``We should do this because it makes economic sense and because it makes environmental sense,'' said Mitch Jackson, FedEx's environmental director, who said the company would also soon increase the number of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles it operates to save gasoline.
The Oakland solar project will provide about 25 percent of FedEx's annual power at the hub, where 1,700 people work.
FedEx would not say how much the system will cost to build, but said up to 50 percent of the cost will be funded by state money administered through utility Pacific Gas and Electric.
The project will convert light from the sun into electricity through nearly 5,800 solar panels built by Sharp (6753.T). The panels will be installed by private company PowerLight, which this summer said it was helping to build the world's largest solar energy system in Germany which will be 10 megawatts.
This fall, FedEx will increase the number of its hybrids to 18 on the road and two for experimental use. The vehicles get up to 50 percent better fuel efficiency.
While FedEx has some 70,000 vehicles in its express and medium duty fleets, the company hopes to make hybrids one of its ``standard'' vehicles, said Jackson. FedEx is working with green group Environmental Defense and Eaton Corp. (ETN.N), the manufacturer of its hybrid trucks, to bring the vehicles closer to mass production and thereby lower their cost.
``We are working diligently to make these vehicles viable not only for us, but for other fleets as well, we want other companies out there to adopt this technology and share in this environmental benefit `` said Jackson.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Standoff in Congress Blocks Action on Environmental Bills
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40564-2004Oct17.html
For another year, the confluence of partisan tensions, ideological differences, regional conflicts and interest group politics has blocked action on key environmental legislation including reducing air pollution and protecting endangered species, according to lawmakers, advocates and academics.
Some analysts warn that the long-standing impasse is reaching a crisis point, as some federal programs are running low on funds and public health threats such as asthma and respiratory problems and pollution of lakes and streams are rising. The stalemate has prompted the Bush administration to resolve environmental questions through changes in federal regulations, effectively leaving Congress on the sidelines.
"We are in a stalemate," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.). He said that although he resents the executive branch's growing influence on environmental issues, "we've allowed it to happen. We never should have."
Congress adjourned last week without having acted on a number of key measures, including the president's Clear Skies proposal for reducing power plant emissions; efforts to renew an expired industry tax to fund the cleanup of toxic Superfund sites; limits on heat-trapping gases linked to global warming; and measures to alter federal protections of endangered species.
Last year, Congress approved the administration's Healthy Forests initiative aimed at controlling forest fires by increasing logging on selected federal lands. It also previously approved administration-backed legislation to clean up blighted industrial sites, known as "brownfields" and authorized $40 billion of conservation programs over the coming decade as part of a 2002 farm bill. But for the most part, Congress has had a dismal record of inaction on important environmental issues.
Emblematic of the congressional standoff is the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where the top two senators have been unable to agree to meet in the same room to approve minor bills. The political and ideological chasm is evident in how they discuss environmental issues: Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) describes environmentalists this way: "They are really liberals. They're all strong pro-abortionists, they're all pro-gun control people, flying under the flag of environmentalism." Ranking minority member James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) says President Bush is "killing people" because he won't crack down on pollution from power plants.
Although he promised action on the measure, Inhofe has yet to hold a committee vote on the president's Clear Skies initiative, which Bush says would reduce harmful sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions 70 percent by 2018. Moreover, just two Republicans have co-sponsored the legislation in the Senate, an indication of the lack of interest in a measure the administration touted as a top priority.
Both sides say the government needs to do more to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants, which generate half the nation's electricity but account for 90 percent of the industry's pollution, according to federal estimates. But many environmentalists and Democrats say that federal law calls for steeper and faster pollution curbs than contained in the president's plan and that Congress should also limit carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to global warming.
The utility industry -- which has donated $34 million to federal candidates since Bush took office, two-thirds of which went to Republicans -- has resisted regulation but prefers Bush's plan to other proposals. The outlook is also dim for a bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) that would curb emissions linked to global warming.
McCain said in an interview that his bill has been blocked by "the power and influence of the special interest lobby, especially public utilities and automobile manufacturers," but he was confident public opinion would eventually overcome the opposition. "The question is, how much damage is done before that happens?" he said.
Mark Whitenton, the National Association of Manufacturers' vice president for resources and environmental policy, said that his members want certainty on emissions rules but that he doesn't expect Clear Skies to pass for another four years. "As long as the parties stay close [in Congress], everybody's playing for the election instead of doing good for the country," he said.
Other environmental initiatives have languished for years on Capitol Hill. The Endangered Species Act has remained unchanged for 30 years. The nation's Superfund program, which aims to clean up toxic waste sites but is facing historic budget shortfalls, has not been reauthorized in nearly two decades.
"It's really irksome," said Natural Resources Defense Council advocacy director Greg Wetstone, who has worked on environmental legislative issues on and off the Hill for more than two decades. "What's broken is a political system that's evading science, fact and public opinion."
Although officials of both the Clinton and Bush administrations have opted to regulate in the face of congressional inaction, even some of Bush's top appointees have questioned this approach.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt notes that as the debate over Clear Skies has dragged on, more than 470 counties are failing to meet federal air quality standards. As a result, he said, he has no choice but to push ahead with new rules -- even though some critics have attacked them for not being strict enough.
"Legislation would have been far superior to a regulatory action," Leavitt said. "But [lawmakers] have not been forthcoming. And we can't afford to wait."
Steven Hayward, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says both sides deserve blame for the gridlock. Conservatives are too quick to criticize environmental initiatives without articulating what they can support, he said. Meanwhile, environmentalists fail to give Republicans credit for their efforts, such as when President George H.W. Bush helped shepherd clean air legislation into law in 1990.
"What was a consensus issue is now a bitter partisan issue," Hayward said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Hundreds Protest as Belarus Leader Sweeps Election
October 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-belarus.html
MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said Monday voters had shown overwhelming support for his plan to stay in power, but hundreds took to the streets to protest against what they said was a rigged referendum.
Western monitors said Sunday's vote, held in conjunction with parliamentary elections which shut out the liberal opposition, fell badly short of international standards.
``What is said and written is 95 percent lies,'' Lukashenko told reporters. ``There is no dictatorship here and no violation of human rights.''
Official figures showed Lukashenko won the support of nearly 80 percent of registered voters for a proposal to lift a constitutional rule limiting him to two terms. And in the parliamentary vote, the beleaguered liberal opposition failed to win a single seat in the 110-member lower house.
Up to 2,000 people, mostly students and youths, braved the cold weather and gathered in central Minsk to protest against Lukashenko, chanting ``Shame!'' and ``Truth! Truth!.''
The demonstrators waved red and white national flags and carried slogans proclaiming ``No to a third term!.''
Police and protesters clashed briefly as the crowd was approaching the president's offices, and police used batons to break up the crowd.
The referendum will enable Lukashenko, already in power since 1994 in the ex-Soviet state, to run again in 2006. He needed 50 percent of 7 million votes to alter the constitution.
``The results were overwhelming. I didn't expect support to such an extent. Don't look here for tricks or falsification,'' said a beaming Lukashenko, seen in the West as Europe's last hard-line leader. He said he had no plans to change his policies.
Western countries accuse Lukashenko of hounding his opponents, interfering in the election process and closing down independent media outlets. They decry his refusal to abandon Soviet-style command economics.
CHEATED TO GET RESULTS?
The opposition, weakened by regular crackdowns and threats of detentions and newspaper closures, said authorities had cheated to get the results.
``Lukashenko has stolen our victory. He falsified the results,'' opposition leader Nikolai Statkevich told the crowd.
Several local reporters said they had been put under pressure by authorities to write reports favorable to the government and even beaten up.
The head of the monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Tone Tingsgaard, said the ``vote fell significantly short ofstandards.'' ``Democratic freedoms were largely disregarded by the authorities.''
The OSCE said counting procedures lacked transparency and noted instances of ballot stuffing. The United States doubted the vote met international standards.
``The whole process, where a leader from his lofty perch tries to extend his stay in power is suspect. It's like a referee rigging the game,'' a State Department official, who asked not to be named, said.
Lukashenko dismissed Western criticism.
``We turned the elections into a real festival. People came here with prejudices, but we conducted the elections in such a way that there can be no carping,'' he said.
Neighboring Russia was more supportive of the vote, saying monitors from Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had found no serious law violations.
``In our opinion the results of the voting in Belarus represent public opinion in the republic,'' a Foreign Ministry statement quoted spokesman Alexander Yakovenko as saying.
--------
N.J. Mom Vows to Keep Protesting Iraq War
October 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Soldiers-Mother.html
HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP, N.J.(AP) -- When President Bush and the first lady come looking for votes in New Jersey, Sue Niederer vows to be nowhere near them. She doesn't want to risk finding herself in handcuffs again.
Last month, police escorted Niederer from a rally after she demanded to know why her son, Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin, was killed in Iraq. Dvorin died in February while trying to disarm a bomb.
Video footage of Niederer holding a sign with the words ``President Bush You Killed My Son'' was splashed across television screens for days. Prosecutors later dropped trespass charges against her.
But while President Bush and his wife were scheduled to be an hour's drive away on Monday, Niederer has no plans to join any of her fellow war protesters outside the campaign rally.
``I'm not going near any of the Bushies,'' said Niederer, a substitute school teacher. ``I'm not going to subject myself to any of it. My point was made.''
Instead, Niederer will be where she was the day she learned her son died.
``I'll be in a classroom. Speaking to the kids is more important,'' she said.
Niederer, 55, won't be a substitute teacher Monday. Instead, she'll be an anti-war lecturer, a mission she began two weeks after he son died when another mother asked if she would join a protest outside Princeton University.
That protest in February was Niederer's first brush with confrontational politics. But, Niederer insists she is no radical activist, no plotter against America. During the Vietnam era, Niederer said she avoided war rallies, and was intent on staying home and raising her children.
``This is who I am, what you see here, just a person who loves children and misses her son terribly,'' she said.
``Every time somebody else is killed, I grieve again. Every mother grieves again,'' she said. ``This is not a political statement. We hurt. We hurt terribly.''
Army recruiters first talked to Seth Dvorin when he was a junior at South Brunswick High School. Niederer told her son to go to college.
``He was smart,'' she said. He wanted to go to Syracuse University, but at the time all the family could afford was Rutgers, she recalled.
Dvorin eventually joined the Army after graduating college in 2002. The next year, he married his college sweetheart, and that September left for Iraq.
But, by the end of 2003, he was disillusioned with the war. During a two-week leave Niederer begged him not to go back.
``He said, 'Mom, I'm a lieutenant. I have 18 men under me. I must bring my men home safe. That's my mission,''' Niederer recalled.
Dvorin died Feb. 3. He was 24.
The next day Niederer watched the news and saw Bush administration officials say there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
``My son dies the day before and you're telling me the reason we went to war was a mistake. How do you think a mother feels?'' Niederer asked.
Angry, she voiced her frustration to reporters who called asking about her son's death. She spoke to friends, neighbors and family at the funeral where more than 400 people gathered to mourn her son.
She then got a call from another mother who had lost a son in the war. The woman invited her to join others protesting outside an appearance by Secretary of State Colin Powell at Princeton University.
The rally led to more protests. Community groups invited her to speak. So did schools. Niederer joined activists outside the Republican National Convention in New York, and traveled to Washington, D.C., whenever a march was planned.
She gathered with the families of those killed in Iraq and demanded to see the caskets as they were brought back to America.
``I really feel this is my mission,'' Niederer said. ``Bring the troops home as soon as possible. Make sure the families are taken care of. That's what I want. I speak. I go out to schools. I protest.''
Her neighbors and co-workers are proud, she said. She also welcomes those who disagree, like those she met at the Bush campaign rally and those who call her house at night to say her son volunteered to fight.
``It's free speech. That's what I'm doing,'' Niederer said.
--------
Tahiti crisis sparks mass protest
BBC
18 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3752880.stm
A political crisis has escalated in French Polynesia, where at least 15,000 people have staged the Pacific territory's biggest ever protest rally.
Supporters of the ousted pro-independence president, Oscar Temaru, demanded the dissolution of parliament and fresh elections.
They thronged the streets of the Tahitian capital Papeete on Saturday.
Mr Temaru, who was removed from office by a censure vote eight days ago, has accused France of interfering.
In May, Mr Temaru became the first pro-independence leader to be elected in French Polynesia, defeating the former conservative president, Gaston Flosse - a close ally of French President Jacques Chirac.
Paris accused
Mr Temaru has accused France of using underhand tactics to remove him from office.
Speaking to the demonstrators on Saturday, Mr Temaru called on the French president to "respect the people's decision on 23 May".
"We will not accept the return of Mr Flosse to power," he said.
Mr Flosse, who was in office for 16 years before the elections, has said he will stand in the presidential vote which must take place before 25 October. Request
French Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande has added to accusations that the French government was closely implicated in attempts to "destabilise" the Pacific territory's government.
He told French Europe 1 radio, that there had been "an act of corruption" which had enabled the no-confidence motions to be passed.
"What is happening in Polynesia is extremely serious because four months ago there were elections; a majority emerged from the ballot box; a new president was installed after 16 years of omnipotence on the part of Mr Gaston Flosse."
He said that he had written to Mr Chirac to ask for the dissolution of the French Polynesian assembly and fresh elections.
"What we want is the dissolution of the Polynesian assembly and a return to the ballot box," he said.
The French Overseas Territories Minister Brigitte Girardin said she did not want to enter into an argument with the Socialist Party.
She told France 2 TV: "The role of the state is to enforce the law and I don't accept that it be attacked and that some set themselves up as super guardian of legality."
France retains control of law enforcement, defence and the money supply, but has allowed more autonomy in French Polynesia, which groups 118 islands.
France is represented by a high commissioner appointed by Paris.
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