Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Nuclear Nightmare
3 European nations to pledge nuclear technology
France says future is nuclear with new generation of power-plants
Others in addition to A Q Khan involved in nuke proliferation: US
Iranian President: Talks Only Way To Resolve Nuclear Crisis
Iran Insists on Right to Enrich Uranium
Iran Conducts New Shahab-3 Missile Test
Kerry pledges to hold face-to-face talks with North Korea
U.N. agency gets OK to visit nuclear plant
Brazil Agrees to Inspection of Nuclear Site
Brazil Sees Deal on UN Nuclear Dispute in 30 Days
2 Plead Guilty in Los Alamos Fraud Case
MILITARY
Bin Laden's al Qaeda control questioned
Celebrity Draft Dodgers Face Conscription Next Month
Serbia & Montenegro: Let the Fun Begin: Elections in Kosovo
Gunman forces shutdown of British air force base
NEC launches world's fastest supercomputer
Colombia's bullet-proof tailor
Iran Uses Russian Technology to Increase Range of Ballistic Missiles
CARE director abducted
Kidnappers Seize a Relief Official Working in Iraq
US air strikes hit Iraqi rebel city
300 Iraqi soldiers abandon unit in Samarra
Israeli defence chiefs bid to crush calls to disobey Gaza pullout orders
Israel arrests 2,500 Palestinian children
Turkish Cypriot government quits
Russia must end 'appalling' military hazing: HRW
Russian army bullying 'horrific'
CIA backs away from Al Qaeda tip
Poor Intelligence Misled Troops About Risk of Drawn-Out War
Unit first to balk in 175,000 Iraq convoy missions
Iraq Casualties
Army Reservist in Abuse Scandal Pleads Guilty to Five Charges
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Foes of Death Penalty Making Gradual Gains in Africa
White House Assails Parts of Bills
White House rejects clauses on immigration
The Heroine Who Offered Hope for Iraq
Spanish Say Foiled Plot Targeted Anti-Terror Headquarters
Britain Charges Cleric Sought by U.S. for Aiding Terrorism
Britain Charges Muslim Cleric Sought by U.S.
POLITICS
Poor nations found to be most corrupt
Ads Push the Factual Envelope
Anti-Kerry Film Won't Be Aired
Pentagon to Place U.S. Ballot on Internet for Overseas Voters
Soros-supported voter-registration drive probed
Ohio aids probe of bogus voter registry forms
Pentagon to Place U.S. Ballot on Internet for Overseas Voters
OTHER
Greenhouse gases are the most imminently threatening
ACTIVISTS
Peace Profiteers
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Nightmare
The Washington Post
By Robert Samuelson
October 20, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46555-2004Oct19.html
The world now has about 20,000 nuclear weapons; there were once 65,000. It must be counted as a major miracle of the modern age that in the 59 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki none of them has been used in anger. With hindsight, history may conclude that the major threat facing the United States -- and the world -- in 2004 was not the war in Iraq or the immediate danger of terrorism. It was the impending breakdown of the global system that for six decades kept nuclear holocaust at bay.
Put differently: Despite this campaign's focus on Iraq and terrorism, the next president's major foreign policy problem may involve what can be done about Iran and North Korea.
North Korea already claims to have nuclear weapons; estimates are from six to eight, though the claims and estimates could be wrong. Iran denies pursuing nuclear weapons, but its denials are doubted by outside experts and undermined by Iran's incomplete compliance with nuclear inspections.
There are now eight nuclear powers: the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel (suspected), Britain and France. The danger is not mainly increasing that number by two. It is that if North Korea and Iran gain nuclear weapons, other countries -- possibly many of them -- would ultimately go nuclear. Then, every nuclear danger would rise dramatically: miscalculation, preemptive attacks, theft, a global market in weapons technology, and use by terrorist groups.
Since the 1950s, a two-part system has prevented nuclear horror.
The first is "mutual assured destruction." The Americans and Soviets didn't attack each other, because both knew they faced annihilation. Over time, other safeguards (the Washington-Moscow "hotline," for example) emerged to minimize miscalculations. One side effect was that, aside from Britain and France, few advanced countries that could have developed nuclear weapons did so. Most lived under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. If they were attacked, they knew (or thought) the United States would retaliate.
The second pillar is the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This now commits five major nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France) not to transfer weapons technology to other countries. All other signatories, numbering more than 170, disavow nuclear weapons and permit inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. North Korea and Iran signed the NPT; India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba did not.
If North Korea and Iran go nuclear, this system would be in tatters. The NPT would seem toothless, and the residual self-restraint of "mutual assured destruction" might evaporate.
Would Japan (or South Korea) trust the United States to retaliate against North Korea? Doubts might inspire Japan (or South Korea) to go nuclear. Would Indonesia, Asia's third-largest country, want nuclear weapons? If Iran went nuclear, would Turkey, Egypt or Saudi Arabia follow suit? Would Europe want a bigger nuclear arsenal? The point: If North Korea and Iran permanently go nuclear, we will cross a threshold with unpredictable and frightening consequences.
Unfortunately, it's unclear how we can prevent this. Airstrikes can no longer eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons because, as Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute says, "we don't know where they are." Military strikes might have worked in the early 1990s (eliminating the capacity to produce weapons), but the risk was that North Korea would attack South Korea.
In their book "Crisis on the Korean Peninsula," Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki report that the North Korean military has 1.1 million troops; 12,000 artillery pieces, 500 of which can hit Seoul; 500 ballistic missiles; 20 tunnels under the South Korean border; and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons. "North Korea would probably begin any war with a massive artillery barrage of South Korean and U.S. positions . . . and likely of Seoul itself," they write. "Chemical weapons might well be used."
American airstrikes -- or perhaps Israeli -- might destroy Iran's bomb-making capabilities. But at what cost? Iran might retaliate by sponsoring anti-U.S. terrorism. After an attack or economic sanctions, it might curb oil production.
It's not obvious (to me, at least) whether George Bush or John Kerry could best handle the nuclear threat. Britain, France and Germany have urged Iran to abandon plans to enrich nuclear fuel (from which bombs can be made) in return for assured fuel supplies for its reactors and pledges of economic aid. Kerry has endorsed such an approach, and the Bush administration has backed it, through skeptically. Kerry might work better with the Europeans and Iranians (whom he hasn't labeled part of the "axis of evil''). The case for Bush is that he's scarier. Iran might accept a diplomatic solution if it stood to lose its nuclear facilities through airstrikes.
On North Korea, O'Hanlon and Mochizuki suggest a similar bargain. North Korea surrenders its weapons and submits to inspections; in return, it receives security guarantees from the United States, diplomatic recognition and economic aid. The idea is to bribe a country from going nuclear. Operating on that theory, the Clinton administration signed a less far-reaching agreement with North Korea in 1994, but the North Koreans ultimately cheated. None of these bargains will work if either country's true aim is to possess nuclear weapons and not simply use them as negotiating chips.
Bush and Kerry haven't debated these issues in detail, because each realizes that the victor's practical choices are bleak. If there's any hope, it lies in this paradox: A country with nuclear weapons enhances its power enormously -- and its chances of annihilation. The next president must somehow convince the North Koreans and Iranians that they are taking themselves, and everyone else, down a path of madness.
-------- europe
3 European nations to pledge nuclear technology
October 20, 2004
By Michael Adler
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041019-094640-3500r.htm
VIENNA, Austria - Europe's three main nations are ready to promise Iran nuclear technology, including a light-water nuclear reactor, if Tehran takes steps to show it is not secretly trying to make atomic weapons, according to a confidential document obtained by Agence France-Presse yesterday.
"We would support the acquisition by Iran of a light water research reactor," said the document presented by Britain, France and Germany to Western nations ahead of a meeting of the so-called Euro-3 with Iran in Vienna, Austria, tomorrow.
The paper, presented to a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations last week in Washington, outlines the EU trio's position "in the run up" to a meeting Nov. 25 of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog that is expected to determine whether Iran is cooperating with the IAEA.
In Washington, the State Department would neither confirm nor deny the reported promise.
"We don't object to Iran having a reactor," a senior department official said. "We object to Iran enriching uranium and having a cycle that allows them to hide weapons development."
The Bush administration insists that the IAEA should refer Iran's nuclear ambitions to the U.N. Security Council for any penalties, no matter what Iran does between now and the Nov. 25 IAEA meeting.
The reported European promise to Iran is similar to the one set into motion by the Clinton administration for North Korea in 1994. But the deal collapsed after George W. Bush took office when Washington froze the program, then accused North Korea of cheating. North Korea responded by rejecting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Tomorrow's meeting in Vienna is to give Iran a last chance to come clean and to agree to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment ahead of the IAEA meeting.
Enriched uranium can be used to make fuel for civilian reactors but also can serve as the explosive core of atomic weapons.
Iran also is working on building a heavy-water reactor, which can make plutonium ideal for nuclear weapons, while a light-water reactor makes a safer form of plutonium, scientists say.
A Western diplomat said the EU trio had told the United States the document would be "used as the basis to make the offer to Iran," although this was not the final text.
The document said there was only "a short period of time [left] to secure a comprehensive and acceptable understanding from Iran," which the IAEA has been investigating since February 2003 on U.S. accusations that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program.
The United States does not "endorse" the trio's approach but is watching the initiative to see how it develops. It then would reconvene the G-8 nations, which comprise Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, the Western diplomat said.
"We intend to put to the Iranians an approach containing the immediate decisions we require from them on suspension and draft elements for a long-term agreement which we could start to negotiate as soon as the IAEA verifies that the suspension is in place," the three countries' paper said.
"The suspension will be indefinite, until we reach an acceptable long-term agreement," the three European nations said.
They said that if Iran failed to suspend uranium enrichment, the European countries would join the United States in calling for the Islamic republic to be taken to the U.N. Security Council, which then could impose punishing sanctions.
But if Iran plays ball, they would be ready to promise a whole range of measures, including access to nuclear fuel for its civilian reactors and recognizing Iran's right "to develop a nuclear power generation program to reduce its dependence on oil and gas. To this end, we intend to give the Iranians a clear indication of the sort of longer term benefits Iran would gain in return for the suspension we seek," the paper said.
•Staff reporter Nicholas Kralev in Washington contributed to this article.
--------
France says future is nuclear with new generation of power-plants
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041021153907.zzgrs59g.html
France staked its claim to remain a world leader in atomic energy Thursday by announcing that it will build the first of a new generation of pressurised water nuclear plants at a site on the Normandy coast.
Construction of the EPR (European Pressurised Water Reactor) is due to start in 2007 at Flamanville near Cherbourg on the Cotentin peninsula, with the first electricity being produced five years later, the state-owned generator EDF said in a statement.
Built at a cost of three billion euros (3.8 billion dollars), the reactor will be the first of a so-called "third generation" of nuclear power stations intended to take over from France's existing stock of 19 plants -- including 58 reactors -- over the next two decades.
France currently produces more than 75 percent of its electricity from "second generation" nuclear installations. The earliest at Fassenheim near the German border went into service in 1977, and their life expectancy is around 40 years.
The "first generation" were the prototypes built in the 1950s and 60s.
While the pressurised water technology does not mark a major innovation, the EPR design, conceived over ten years by Siemens of Germany and the French company Areva, is intended to provide electricity more efficiently and more safely than current models.
According to EDF, the reactor should reduce the risk of accident by ten and its double casing be able to withstand the impact of an aircraft flown by terrorists. The design also means that even if there is a disaster, the reactor core will collapse in on itself to contain radiation leaks.
The EPR reactor should also generate 1,600 megawatts of electricity -- compared to 900 for most current reactors -- need less regular re-charging, and have a life span of 60 years.
However opponents of nuclear power say official statements about the safety of EPR are not to be believed. "The EPR reactor offers no greater guarantee against terrorism than any other reactor," said Stephane Lhomme of the Get out of Nuclear collective.
"We are investing three billion euros in a technology that is almost obsolete for political reasons that have no connection with a rational, properly thought-out energy policy," said Greenpeace in a statement.
France's centre-right government took the decision in May to press ahead with the new generation of nuclear reactors, arguing that it is the best response to the likely long-term increase in petrol prices as well as demands for a cleaner environment.
Two other sites, one in northern Normandy and the other in southeast France, had been under consideration for the project.
"On the environmental front the reactor reinforces France's preeminence in the fight against climate change, and economically it will allow us to ensure supply and limit the effects of a rapid increase in oil prices," said Patrick Ollier, chairman of the National Assembly's economic affairs committee.
Development of the EPR is also seen as a crucial way of maintaining France's technological edge in the highly competitive nuclear energy market. Earlier this month President Jacques Chirac was lobbying hard in China for contracts in the country's ambitious nuclear programme.
France also hopes to be chosen as the site for the future International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) which aims to develop the creation of energy through nuclear fusion by mid-century. However the bid from the research station at Cadarache in southern France faces stiff opposition from Japan.
-------- india / pakistan
Others in addition to A Q Khan involved in nuke proliferation: US
PTI
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/8A44EB1C882868EC65256F3300395639?OpenDocument
Washington, Oct 20 (PTI) US has said that it is in the process of unraveling the disgraced Pakistani scientist A Q Khan's nuclear proliferation network. "We are now in the process of unraveling that network, although much work remains to be done, in Pakistan and elsewhere." Undersecretary of State John Bolton has said.
Bolton, who was addressing the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations yesterday said, "over the past decade proliferators have employed increasingly sophisticated and aggressive measures to obtain Weapons of Mass Destruction or missile-related materials." He said recent events, such as the unraveling of Khan's network has brought to light the dangers posed by the deadly trade that went unnoticed. Bolton said the administration's success in persuading Pakistan's leaders to take active measures to interrupt the proliferation of nuclear materials has been overlooked.
Proliferators, he said, rely heavily on the use of front companies and illicit arms brokers in their quest for arms, equipment, sensitive technology,and dual-use goods for their WMD programmes.
They also take other measures to circumvent national export controls, such as falsifying documents, providing false information about the actual end-use of items, and trading through countries with the least sophisticated laws and enforcement capacities, he added. PTI
-------- iran
Iranian President: Talks Only Way To Resolve Nuclear Crisis
(Reuters)
20 October 2004
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/10/79D53592-BCEF-4251-9777-05C0EBBC6ECE.html
-- Iranian President Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami has said that talks and negotiations are the only way to resolve Iran's nuclear standoff with the West. Khatami said in Tehran today that his country is ready to assure the world that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.
Earlier today, reports said Britain, France, and Germany will offer to support Iranian construction of a light-water nuclear reactor as part of a deal aimed at persuading the country to stop its activities to enrich uranium. Nuclear experts say light-water reactors provide little help in the development of atomic weapons.
Enriched uranium can produce fuel for civilian reactors or for nuclear weapons. Iran denies trying to make nuclear bombs.
Meanwhile, Iran has said it has test fired a more accurate version of its Shahab-3 missile, already believed to be capable of hitting Israeli and U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf.
Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani said after a weekly cabinet meeting that the missile fired today has a range of 2,000 kilometers. Previous figures had put the missile's range at between 1,300 and 1,700 kilometres.
--------
Iran Insists on Right to Enrich Uranium
Associated Press
October 20, 2004
http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=7&aid=D85RAO480_story
VIENNA, Austria - Giving Iran one last chance to avoid the threat of U.N. sanctions, Britain, France and Germany will offer nuclear fuel and economic incentives at a meeting Thursday in return for assurances the Tehran regime will suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said.
The offer came as Iran announced Wednesday it has a compromise proposal to end the standoff over its nuclear program. But Iran insisted anew on its right to enrich uranium, which the United States contends is part of a covert attempt to build an atomic weapon.
Iran's vow to continue the practice in a program it insists is geared purely toward generating electricity threatened to deal a setback to the European negotiators, who had hoped the incentives would get it to stop.
Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh did not give details of the compromise, saying in Tehran only that it would not compromise what it considers its right to enrich uranium and had been submitted to the Europeans "for their reaction."
"We expect that our legitimate rights be recognized and that Iran not be deprived of nuclear technology," President Mohammad Khatami told reporters Wednesday in Tehran. "The main problem is that they say, `You should ignore your rights,' and that we would never do."
In a private meeting with Iranian officials in Vienna, senior British, French and German officials planned to try to persuade Iran on Thursday to avoid a showdown next month with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
The incentives being offered to Iran included the possibility of buying nuclear fuel from the West, along with the promise of lucrative trade, the officials said. They did not confirm reports that a light-water nuclear research reactor was part of the package.
"We will have to see the offer. We have not seen anything yet," an Iranian official told The Associated Press. "And then we will have to take it to our capital. We really have to wait and see."
On Nov. 25, the Vienna-based IAEA's 35-nation board of governors will deliver a fresh assessment of Iran's cooperation - or lack of it - with the nuclear watchdog agency. The United States is pressing to report Iran's noncompliance to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
The foreign ministers of Britain and Germany this week urged Iran to indefinitely suspend its nuclear program. Iran has resumed testing, assembling and making centrifuges used to enrich uranium, heightening U.S. concerns that its sole purpose is to build a bomb.
But the three European powers are holding out hope that a diplomatic confrontation - and the looming threat of punishing sanctions - can be avoided if Tehran agrees to give up enriching uranium in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology.
If Iran does not accept the incentives, suspend enrichment and agree to IAEA verification that it has done so, the three likely would back the U.S. push to report Tehran's defiance to the Security Council, the diplomats said.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the nuclear agency was not directly involved in the talks, but that agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei "absolutely" welcomed the initiative.
"Mr. ElBaradei has been calling on the Iranians to fully suspend" uranium enrichment, Fleming said. "He's been supporting dialogue as a way forward in Iran, coupled with a continuation of an intensive inspection process. Any constructive dialogue is welcomed."
A Western diplomat familiar with the IAEA's dealings with Iran called the possible promise of a light-water nuclear reactor particularly intriguing, saying it was the first time that something so specific and potentially appealing to the Iranians was on offer.
Experts say Iran has been building a heavy-water reactor, which would use plutonium that also could be used in a nuclear weapon. A light-water research reactor, by contrast, uses a lower grade of plutonium.
Aghazadeh made it clear Wednesday that Iran would not forfeit its right to enrich uranium to generate power. Enrichment also can be used to produce atomic weapons.
"We have some very important principles. These principles can't be altered. Nuclear technology has become a local technology now," he said.
Khatami said his government was prepared to negotiate ways of assuring the world that Iran's nuclear program would not be used to make nuclear bombs.
"We don't want anything against the law," Khatami said, pledging to cooperate with the IAEA and "assure that our activities won't be diverted toward weapons."
--------
Iran Conducts New Shahab-3 Missile Test
Tehran (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-04zzp.html
Iran carried out a new test on Wednesday of its upgraded Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which it says has a range of at least 2,000 kilometres (about 1,200 miles), Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani said.
"A few minutes ago we carried out a new test of the Shahab-3 missile in the presence of observers," he said.
Steady progress made by Iran on its ballistic missile programme is a major cause for concern for the international community, already alarmed over the country's nuclear activities.
"We tested the range, the destructive capacity, the guidance system and its capacity to hit a defined target," the defence minister said, quoted by the student news agency ISNA.
"We invited all those who had doubts (over the missile) but there were no foreign observers," he said. "Some people had expressed doubts over the success of our (last) test (on August 11) ... so we carried out a new test."
He refused to specify the missile's range. "We do not reveal the range of our missiles," Shamkhani said.
But after the test in August, Nasser Maleki, deputy director of Iran's aerospace industry organisation, said the upgraded Shahab-3 - believed to be based on a North Korean design - had a range of 2,000 kilometres.
"Very certainly we are going to improve our Shahab-3 missile and all of our other missiles," he said on October 7.
Previous figures had put the missile's range at between 1,300 and 1,700 kilometres, already bringing arch-enemy Israel and US bases in the region well within range.
-------- korea
Kerry pledges to hold face-to-face talks with North Korea
WATERLOO, Iowa (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041020161857.7is78q36.html
Democratic nominee John Kerry on Wednesday pledged that as president, he would open one-on-one talks with North Korea on its nuclear program, a step President George W. Bush has refused to take.
Kerry, in his most strident call yet for direct talks with Pyongyang, said Bush had sat by and allowed Pyongyang's arsenal to rise from two nuclear weapons to six or eight bombs.
"That means that North Korea ... a country that will sell anything to anyone, can sell nuclear weapons and still hold and arsenal in reserve," said Kerry in a major speech on national security in Iowa.
"I will work with our allies to get the six party talks back on track. And I will talk directly to the North Koreans, as our South Korean, Chinese and Russian partners have requested us to do."
Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton did conduct one on one talks with North Korea, sending his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in late 2000.
But Bush halted that approach when he came to office, a position solidified when it emerged that North Korea had been enriching uranium, in violation of a 1994 anti-nuclear treaty with Washington.
The current administration says bilateral talks with Pyongyang would be tantamount to offering a reward to the Stalinist state for bad behavior.
It has addressed the crisis through six-party talks involving Washington and Pyongyang, but also China, South Korea, Japan and Russia -- though there has been little progress.
-------- latinamerica
U.N. agency gets OK to visit nuclear plant
October 20, 2004
By Marion Baillot
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041019-094641-7901r.htm
After a months-long deadlock over international inspections, Brazil agreed yesterday to allow officials from the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency to visit a nuclear facility.
The concern is that Brazilian enriched uranium, if refined to a level capable of powering an atom bomb, would become available to a terrorist organization or a rogue state.
"There is no Iran syndrome" in Brazil, Minister of Science and Technology Eduardo Campos told a Brazilian newspaper on Monday. "There is no atomic mystery. Brazil does not represent a nuclear threat."
Brazil's nuclear program is "pacifist and strategic to the country's future," Mr. Campos said earlier.
Nevertheless, Brazil's reluctance to fully open its nuclear program to outside scrutiny has engendered a major concern that it could serve as a precedent for other nations asked to provide full access to their nuclear programs, such as Iran and North Korea.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is mandated under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to ensure member states do not divert nuclear material for military purposes.
Brazil, which has one of the world's largest uranium reserves, denied IAEA inspectors full access to its centrifuges at its plant in Resende, about 60 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, in February and March.
Mr. Campos said the performance of Brazil's centrifuges was 30 percent more efficient than those of plants in other countries and, accordingly, Brazil should be allowed to protect the technology that could be stolen by other countries if outsiders got a glimpse of it.
"Brazil has nothing to hide with respect to its process of enriching uranium, except with the technology Brazil acquired and has a natural desire to protect," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said recently.
IAEA officials yesterday declined to offer details of inspections yesterday, saying they were still continuing negotiations with Brazilian authorities.
A diplomat who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity said an agreement would allow inspectors to vindicate Brazil's contention that it has neither enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels nor diverted the nuclear material to other places.
"They came upon a formula that gives the agency enough and yet lets Brazil save face," said one diplomat in Vienna, Austria, where the IAEA is based.
--------
Brazil Agrees to Inspection of Nuclear Site
October 20, 2004
By LARRY ROHTER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/international/americas/20brazil.html?pagewanted=all&position=
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 19 - In a step toward resolving a longstanding impasse with the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency, the Brazilian government has agreed to grant inspectors access to a plant Brazil has built to produce nuclear fuel for both domestic use and eventual sale abroad.
Whether the limited access allowed to the three inspectors, who arrived here this week, will be enough to satisfy the agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is not yet clear. Although the I.A.E.A. has withheld any public judgment, Brazilian officials are already talking of a breakthrough.
"What has changed now is the attitude of trying to seek a solution that at the same time guarantees the preservation of our technology and permits the agency to be certain that there is no diversion of material within the factory," Odair Gonçalves, president of Brazil's national nuclear commission, said at a news conference here on Monday.
The focal point of the dispute is a uranium enrichment plant in Resende, about 100 miles northwest of here, that is partly controlled by the Brazilian Navy. In the past, Brazil has balked at the atomic energy agency's insistence on unfettered access to the factory, insisting that Brazil's track record as a nonaggressive regional power entitles it to "dignified and differentiated" treatment, in the form of a relaxation of international rules.
The agency has resisted that demand, which nuclear experts said would set a dangerous precedent that countries like Iran and North Korea would seek to exploit. With a crucial meeting about Iran's nuclear program scheduled for next month, and with an international review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty scheduled for early 2005, the agency does not want to give any impression of weakness or wavering, diplomats and nuclear experts said.
According to scientists, diplomats and other government officials, the tentative compromise reached by Brazil and the atomic agency would allow the international inspectors to see the pipes and valves of the machinery at the plant, which is scheduled to open in a few months. But Brazil would also be able to claim victory, if inspectors sign off on the arrangement after preliminary visits this week, by continuing to keep hidden parts of the centrifuge system that it claims are based on an original and proprietary technology.
Nuclear experts dismiss the notion that Brazil is trying to resume its nuclear weapons program, which it abandoned almost two decades ago. But there are other concerns, mostly focusing on the country's ambition to export uranium. Some nuclear experts have described the idea as not economically viable given the large stocks already on the market, and they wonder why Brazil does not just continue to go abroad to buy what it needs.
"They are so far behind, I can't see how they can compete with Urenco," said David Albright, a physicist and former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, referring to a European consortium that produces enriched uranium. "The worry in the long run is that they would be tempted to sell on the margins to some bad players, countries that no one wants to deal with, like Burma or Vietnam."
Brazilian officials have said that because the country has the world's fifth-largest known reserves of uranium, enrichment is a matter of national security. The country suffered an energy crisis early in the decade, they note, and plans to build a third nuclear power plant to supplement two already in operation near here.
"This needs to be seen in a long-term, rather than immediate, perspective," said Roberto Abdenur, the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States and Brazil's former ambassador to the I.A.E.A. "Nuclear energy is staging a comeback, and with the demand for lightly-enriched uranium tending to grow in coming years, it is economically and strategically important to Brazil not to lose sight of this market and to guarantee its own supply of nuclear energy."
During a visit here two weeks ago, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the nuclear impasse with Brazilian officials. In public remarks, he dismissed the notion that Brazil is seeking to develop atomic weapons but also urged the government here to be more cooperative with international inspection efforts.
"We have no concerns about Brazil moving in a direction of anything but peaceful nuclear power, of course, and in creating their own fuel for their power plants," he said. "There's no proliferation concern on our part, but we think they should work with the I.A.E.A. to satisfy the I.A.E.A.'s need for oversight."
But independent nuclear experts have expressed concern about what they describe as Brazil's history of deceit and obfuscation in the strategic arms field, including secret dealings with rogue states like Iraq and Libya. That, they argue, explains some of the skepticism among scientists and diplomats that has greeted Brazil's claims of purely innocent, energy-related intentions.
"Under the Space for Peace program, the United States shared re-entry vehicle technology, which is also useful for warheads, with Brazil back in the 1980's," recalled Henry D. Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and a former Defense Department official specializing in nuclear proliferation issues. "That technology ended up in Libya, because Brazil gave it to them. There's no question about it."
When asked the source of his information, Mr. Sokolski, a former member of the Central Intelligence Agency's Senior Advisory Panel, responded, "Let's not get into that." He also suggested that the basic technology of the Brazilian centrifuges may have been obtained from Pakistan and not fully developed here.
"Why do you think the I.A.E.A. wants to see everything?" Mr. Sokolski asked.
In 1981, Brazil, then ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship, signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Iraq that resulted in the shipping of several tons of uranium to Baghdad. Later, the former head of Brazil's clandestine nuclear weapons program worked in Iraq as a consultant there until American pressure forced his recall.
Mr. Abdenur argued that such concerns are no longer relevant. Since belatedly adhering to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1997, he said, Brazil has been a model international citizen.
"What went before is another chapter," he said.
--------
Brazil Sees Deal on UN Nuclear Dispute in 30 Days
Reuters
Oct 20, 2004
By Andrei Khalip
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041020/wl_nm/nuclear_brazil_dc_1
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil could reach a deal within 30 days that would resolve a dispute over nuclear nonproliferation inspections following a visit by U.N. experts to the country's new uranium enrichment plant this week, Brazilian officials said on Wednesday.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not indicate what progress had been made and said any decision would come later from its headquarters in Vienna.
Brazil and the IAEA have disagreed over the level of access required for proper inspection in the almost year-old dispute.
"The climate of talks is excellent and it looks like they are heading for a consensus," a source close to the talks told Reuters.
A spokeswoman at the Science and Technology Ministry in the capital, Brasilia, said: "Within 30 days we may have the conclusion."
IAEA experts met Brazilian officials on Wednesday to discuss Tuesday's visit to the Resende plant in Rio de Janeiro state before leaving, according to a ministry spokesman.
The experts wanted to check whether the Brazilian proposal that allows inspection of tubes, valves and joints of centrifuges at Resende is viable. Brazil has offered only limited visual access to centrifuges, which it says still allows for verification that no uranium is diverted for use in weapons.
"The Brazilian government is being constructive in trying to find an appropriate solution," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "The inspectors will be returning to headquarters with their report and assessment to be analyzed before a final decision is reached."
The Brazilian ministry spokesman, in Rio de Janeiro for the talks, said the Brazilian side had "very positive expectations."
"There were no problems, no questioning during the visit."
The United Nations (news - web sites) and Washington have pressed Brazil to resolve the inspections impasse in order not to set an example for countries such as Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) which the United States suspects of defying the IAEA to develop bombs.
The Resende plant can only start enriching uranium after U.N. approval. Brazil says the locally developed technology used in Resende is 30 percent more efficient and 25 percent more cost-effective than at most U.S. enrichment plants and the country fears it could be stolen if outsiders see it.
Brazil, home to the world's sixth largest proven 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 considering a third.
Enrichment is a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or weapons. Weapons-grade uranium is normally about 20 times more enriched than fuel.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Vienna and Axel Bugge in Brasilia)
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
2 Plead Guilty in Los Alamos Fraud Case
October 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/national/20alamos.html
SANTA FE, N.M., Oct. 19 - Two Los Alamos National Laboratory employees implicated in a purchasing scandal have pleaded guilty to mail fraud and conspiracy in exchange for having other charges dropped, an assistant United States attorney said Tuesday.
The men, Peter Bussolini, a facilities manager, and Scott Alexander, a buyer, pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to mail fraud and conspiracy to commit a felony for purchases that cost the laboratory up to $200,000, said Fred Federici, the United States attorney who prosecuted the case. In exchange for the pleas, prosecutors agreed to drop 26 other charges against each defendant.
The purchasing scandal led to Congressional hearings and a federal investigation of the laboratory. Los Alamos has also been troubled by security lapses, including the possible disappearance of two disks with classified information. Four workers were fired in the safety and security inquiry at the laboratory.
Mr. Bussolini, 66, and Mr. Alexander, 42, were charged with conspiring to keep personal purchases off official ledgers by altering item descriptions or asserting that merchandise fell off a truck, prosecutors said.
Items they are suspected of buying include a flat-screen television set, vacuum cleaners and an electric gate opener. The two were fired in 2002.
The men, who are to be sentenced in January, face 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for mail fraud. Conspiracy charges carry a five-year maximum sentence.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Bin Laden's al Qaeda control questioned
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 20, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041019-103059-2128r
The top American commander in Afghanistan said yesterday he has no evidence that Osama bin Laden is in day-to-day control of al Qaeda but suggested that the long-absent terrorist leader is alive.
Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, speaking to reporters during a visit to the Pentagon, talked mostly about a lack of evidence about bin Laden's whereabouts, health and current role in the al Qaeda network. He remains a critical target, however, Gen. Barno said.
Still, "I don't see any indications that he is in day-to-day command and control, as it were, of the al Qaeda organization or the other terrorist groups that work with him, certainly in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area," Gen. Barno said.
Gen. Barno suggested that bin Laden's death would be difficult to conceal from intelligence services, even if he died in a secret place, because his associates would talk about it. Recent communications from al Qaeda's top echelon have come from bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as videotaped messages.
Early this year, Gen. Barno and his staff predicted that bin Laden would be captured by the end of the year. No longer.
"I retired my crystal ball, and I don't make predictions anymore in terms of when we're potentially going to get any of the figures out there that we pursue every day in Afghanistan," he said.
Gen. Barno called the Oct. 9 presidential election a success, and told stories of Afghans waiting in the snow for hours to vote. Some stayed in line even as insurgent rockets landed 200 yards away.
Another visitor to Washington, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, speaking to reporters at the State Department, characterized the elections as "a spectacular success" unprecedented in the South Asian country's 5,000-year history.
"The people of Afghanistan want their country to succeed," said Mr. Khalilzad, who was born in the South Asian country. "They want us to help them."
To do that, he said, the threat from Afghanistan's former extremist Taliban rulers must be ended, and the country's massive cultivation of opium, which accounts for half of Afghanistan's economy, must be stopped.
Security forces must be built up under a strategic partnership between the United States and Afghanistan, he said.
"We have seen that the failure of Afghanistan causes problems that can have enormous effect on the security of the American people. We saw that September 11," Mr. Khalilzad said. The airplane hijackers who attacked the United States on that day in 2001 were trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Gen. Barno said Afghan- istan's major security problems include stemming the narcotics trade and trying to persuade former rank-and-file Taliban militiamen to join society.
U.N. surveys estimate that Afghanistan's illegal poppy cultivation accounted for three-quarters of the world's opium last year and earned $2.3 billion.
Gen. Barno suggested that U.S. troops eventually might be used to interdict the drug trade but said it is less likely that they will begin to eradicate crops. So far, British-trained Afghan forces have taken the lead in counternarcotics efforts, but the trade flourishes.
-------- asia
Celebrity Draft Dodgers Face Conscription Next Month
CHOSUN
Oct.20, 2004
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200410/200410200036.html
The Military Manpower Administration (MMA) decided Wednesday that the baseball players and celebrities who used drugs to avoid conscription would have their previous exemptions reversed and would undergo new physical exams ahead of enlistment.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police has completed its investigation into over 130 draft dodgers and has asked the Ministry of Justice to bar them from leaving the country. The MMA plans to conduct physical exams of the draft dodgers to determine whether they are legitimately fit for duty.
The MMA will be reassessing those involved, including popular entertainers like 28-year-old Song Seung-hun, 28-year-old Jang Hyuk and 31-year-old Han Jae-seok, along with 49 others by Nov. 4 with the intention of enlisting them at the end of the month. The 77 other draft dodgers who face criminal charges will be enlisted immediately after their trials. One person who is still at large will be dealt with as soon as he is arrested, said the MMA.
The MMA said that the celebrity draft dodgers would be processed without delay and that those resisting would be reported to police.
(Jang Il-hyun, ihjang@chosun.com )
-------- balkans
Serbia & Montenegro: Let the Fun Begin: Elections in Kosovo
balkanalysis.com
October 20, 2004
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=431
Other Balkans Articles This Saturday brings new elections to the "troubled province," as the mass media has for so long been fond of describing Kosovo. Will they result in either a confirmation of Western-proliferated freedom and democracy, or in a minority bloodbath - or, perhaps, have no immediate result whatsoever? And what effect will the upcoming US election have on the next phase in Kosovo's "development?"
NATO, for one, is taking no chances. After having been caught off its guard in March, KFOR has called in two extra battalions, boosting its numbers to over 19,000.
The apparent major problem for the West is convincing those uncooperative Serbs to vote in the elections. Serbian President Boris Tadic, who has called on the besieged minority to do the right thing and participate in the farce, has been upstaged by the Radical Party, which has launched a probably ineffectual impeachment drive. While not supporting such a move, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and the Serbian Orthodox Church both suggest a symbolic boycott of the elections is appropriate, considering the Serbian minority's unresolved security problems in Kosovo.
However, declaring that "...none of us can afford to keep this place in limbo for too long," new UNMIK boss Søren Jessen-Petersen supported the election as a necessary step to settling on Kosovo's final status, and charged that "...those urging Kosovo Serbs not to vote simply do not have in mind the interest of their own people."
To be sure, the Kosovo issue can and is used as a convenient political tool by the various Belgrade factions. And considering that more often than not, their support is more verbal than tangible, there is little reason to expect them to wield anything more than symbolic power when it comes to negotiations. Indeed, as the West is so fond of reminding them, the Serbs are practically irrelevant when it comes to deciding Kosovo's future status.
However, neither the West nor the Serbs in Belgrade are the ones supposed to be voting next week. Those who have remained in the destroyed province are remarkable not so much for any much-trumpeted nationalistic fervor, but for the mere fact that they have stubbornly survived for five years, their homes wrecked and rebuilt and wrecked again, put in and out of refugee camps and living in constant danger of death - this indescribable tenacity in adversity (inat in Serbian) is probably what confounds Albanians most about their neighbors: no matter how much they intimidate, they just can't make them leave.
However, it may just be a matter of time. As a report from Germany's Der Spiegel notes, an independent Kosovo will be one quickly made bereft of all minorities. A partitioned Kosovo, one idea Belgrade has proposed, is anathema to the Albanian majority, as it interferes with their grand dream of territorial wholeness. But for the Serbs, Roma, Turkish and other minorities who have suffered continual repression over the past five years, there is little reason to trust an independent Kosovo run by and for Albanians. Experience would seem to show that their fears are borne out unless, as Kosovo PM Rexhepi says, it's all in their heads. Whatever.
Yet there could be a few twists coming up that have nothing to do with whether or not the Serbs vote. Der Spiegel questioned this week whether the "...former bodybuilding trainer, armored vehicle guard, nightclub bouncer and war hero" Daut Haradinaj might just be the "'...high-ranking Albanian politician' that chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte plans to bring before a UN court in The Hague this year." That would certainly spice things up a bit, to say the least. Haradinaj has promised independence for Kosovo in one year's time, and claims that a Kosovo constitution has already been written. At campaign rallies, the German magazine reports, angry youth wave flags of the neighboring Republic of Albania, while "local Islamic community leaders are given front row seats."
Are there any other options, in terms of candidates? Reuters' article on "millionaire publisher" turned politician Veton Surroi, who is also calling for independence as soon as possible, seems to be almost a tacit endorsement. However, as the agency admits, "...diplomats say Surroi's political appeal is limited to the intellectual elite and that ORA [his party] is unlikely to roll back the dominance of the two main parties led by Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova and former guerilla leader Hashim Thaci."
The article's epitaph for Kosovo, that is, its obligatory statement of precedence, frames the upcoming election against the alleged history of "...a 78-day NATO bombing campaign to halt Serb repression of Albanian civilians during an Albanian guerrilla insurgency." Of course, the latter "insurgency" is not described as having been terroristic, nor is its intimidation of its own civilians mentioned. But that wouldn't have been convenient for a one-paragraph soundbyte.
One firm believer in this curious view of reality (Bob Dole) visited Kosovo recently to a hero's welcome. One of the staunchest supporters of the 1999 NATO bombing and the Albanian cause in general, Dole was hardly in a position to separate fact from fiction: this week marked his first visit in 14 years, KosovaLive reports. Although retired, Dole allegedly stated that his visit "...reflects also the support of United States of America (USA) for Kosova, both by Democrats and Republicans."
Much has been said regarding the possible changes in US Balkan policy following the presidential election. Is there a reason why the Serbian-Americans are being told to vote for Bush, while the Albanian-Americans seem to be counting on Kerry?
While official statements tend to smooth over any differences of approach, there do seem to be differences between the contenders. So strong, perhaps, that if Kosova Sot is to be believed, even UN chief Kofi Annan is taking heed. Quoting the paper, UNMIK's media monitoring service recently mentioned
"...a report quoting an unnamed senior NATO official who says that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has planned to appoint a special envoy for Kosovo early next year. The same source said that there are many candidates who are interested in this post. 'The Germans, British, Dutch and French are interested. But Annan has decided to give this post to an American after the US presidential elections,' added the source."
-------- britain
Gunman forces shutdown of British air force base, then found dead
LONDON (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041020163451.gb7qdg6f.html
A British serviceman sparked a major security shutdown Wednesday at one of the country's largest air force bases after he went on the loose with a high-powered rifle, before later being discovered dead following a presumed suicide.
The body of Flight Sergeant Philip Herring, 40, was found on the grounds of the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Kinloss, northeast Scotland, some hours after his presence forced its closure and led to a massive manhunt, the Ministry of Defence said.
Police would not confirm the suicide, but said there appeared to be no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death and said there would be no criminal investigation.
"We are sorry to announce such a tragic end to today's incident," said Alan Smith, chief inspector of the local Grampian police.
Roads leading to the Kinloss base were closed and a team of 30 police officers deployed to comb the area for Herring after the serviceman was spotted, armed and roaming the grounds, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Most of the 3,000 staff at the base, home to a fleet of 21 Nimrod reconnaissance planes and which played a lead role in the early phases of the war in Iraq last year, were ordered not to turn up for work.
Local residents in the village of Kinloss were also told to stay indoors.
RAF officers discovered the body while searching the base in a helicopter, a police spokeswoman said.
The defence ministry stressed the incident at the base was unrelated to terrorism.
RAF Kinloss is currently the focus of a defence spending review which could see its planes relocated to the Waddington base in Lincolnshire, east England.
-------- business
NEC launches world's fastest supercomputer
TOKYO (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/041020092625.1impddp9.html
Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp., said Wednesday it has begun selling the world's fastest supercomputer.
NEC claimed its SX-8 is the most powerful 'vector-type' supercomputer, with a sustainable data processing speed well beyond IBM's recently unveiled Blue Gene/L supercomputer.
In September IBM said its Blue Gene/L supercomputer had surpassed NEC's Earth Simulator to become the world's most powerful supercomputer.
IBM's Blue Gene/L is capable of a sustained data processing speed of 36.01 teraflops, or one trillion floating point operations per second.
NEC said its newest SX series model has a peak processing speed of 65 teraflops and a sustainable performance of roughly 90 percent that speed or 58.5 teraflops.
The NEC and IBM supercomputers are different in structure. NEC says its SX-8, because of its vector architecture, "delivers much higher sustained performance than scalar supercomputers" like IBM's Blue Gene/L.
"We have received 100 orders so far," with the first models to be shipped to the UK's national weather forecasting service and the High Performance Computing Center in Stuttgart, Germany, said NEC managing director Tadao Kondo.
The Tokyo-based electronics maker aims to sell or rent 700 models in the first three years.
The monthly rental fee for the SX-8 is a minimum 1.17 million yendollars) and the purchase price is 130 million yen.
Supercomputers are widely used to develop complex products like new airplanes, automobiles and drugs.
--------
Colombia's bullet-proof tailor
BBC
20 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3756738.stm
There may be few advantages to living in a country with an international reputation for violence, kidnapping and murder, but a Colombian tailor appears to have found one.
Alvaro Uribe Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe is among Miguel Caballero's clients
Based in Bogota, Miguel Caballero's eponymous company constructs clothes which help protect the wearer against bullets, knives and other weapons.
As well as domestic customers such as Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, Mr Caballero has made good use of Colombia's notoriety to build up an international base - now boasting President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the Prince of Spain as clients.
The selling point? "If this products functions in Colombia, you have the guarantee it will stop any type of bullet in any place in the world," the tailor told BBC World Service's Outlook Programme.
And the security conscious who also fear frumpiness need not worry. Mr Caballero's clothes, he declares, combine protection with panache.
Lighten up
Mr Caballero said that the idea came to him while still at university.
He was inspired when he saw the lack of protective clothing worn by the bodyguards of one of his fellow students.
"All the time, those guys did not use the best, because it was very uncomfortable and very heavy," he explained.
"They used leather jackets and suede jackets. I came up with a way to put the two characteristics together - security and fashion."
Miguel Caballero began by making bullet-proof leather and suede jackets, but the company has now expanded to other clothes, including raincoats, blazers, and other tops.
Colombian police Colombians frequently find themselves in need of protection Also available are protective shorts - specially designed underwear which protects against knife attacks to sell to prison wardens.
"After we designed this line, we made a T-shirt that stops the knife in the same way," Mr Caballero said.
He said that the clothes are designed for different people - VIPs, bodyguards, and those who wanted to dress safely but also casually.
The weight of a protective jacket has been brought down from 4.5 kilos 10 years ago to 1.2.
It can withstand ammunition from weapons including a 9mm, a .44 Magnum, and a 3.57 revolver.
The products are tested by the staff themselves, in what Mr Caballero - called "demonstrations." He has himself been shot at in three such tests.
"All the new employees have to take part in a real demonstration," he explained.
"You have to believe in our products."
-------- iran
Iran Uses Russian Technology to Increase Range of Ballistic Missiles
MosNews
20.10.2004
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/10/20/iranmissiles.shtml
Iran is taking advantage of Russian military technology with new test launches of ballistic missiles believed capable of hitting Israel and U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf.
"Iran test fired a more accurate version of the Shahab-3 in the presence of observers," Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani told Reuters after a weekly cabinet meeting.
The Shahab-3 is a ballistic missile modified with Russian technology from the orignal North Korean Nodong-1.
The announcements - called "saber-rattling" by an Israeli defense expert - startled the international community, already concerned about Iran's insistence on building a nuclear power plant.
Russia recently announced it had completed construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, but no final agreement has been reached on what Iran will do with the spent nuclear fuel that can be used to build nuclear weapons.
EU diplomats are trying to strike a deal with Iran to encourage it to give up uranium enrichment to defuse a dispute over whether Tehran is seeking nuclear arms.
Washington wants to haul Iran before the U.N. Security Council in November for possible sanctions after a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
-------- iraq
CARE director abducted
October 20, 2004
By Robert H. Reid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041019-115241-9403r.htm
BAGHDAD - Gunmen seized the director of CARE International - a woman who has worked on behalf of Iraqis for three decades - as the British government yesterday weighed a politically volatile American request to transfer soldiers to dangerous areas near Baghdad.
Elsewhere yesterday, a mortar attack killed at least four Iraqi national guardsmen and wounded 80 at a base north of Baghdad, according to the U.S. military. Iraqi officials on the scene said five guardsmen were killed and more than 100 injured. An American contractor also died when mortar shells crashed onto a U.S. base in the Iraqi capital. And three car bombs exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding three.
Margaret Hassan, who holds British, Irish and Iraqi citizenships and is in her early 60s, was kidnapped about 7:30 a.m. while being driven from her home to CARE's office in a western neighborhood of the capital, according to a CARE employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The employee said the group did not employ armed guards.
Arab television station Al Jazeera broadcast a brief video showing Mrs. Hassan, wearing a white blouse and appearing tense, sitting in a room with bare white walls. An editor at the station, based in Qatar, said the tape contained no audio. It did not identify what group was holding her and contained no demand for her release.
In Sydney, CARE Australia announced it had suspended its operations in Iraq following the kidnapping.
Robert Glasser, CARE Australia's chief executive officer, said none of the organization's staff was working after Mrs. Hassan was kidnapped yesterday morning.
CARE Australia is coordinating the international agency's operations in Iraq and had employed Mrs. Hassan as its director in the war-torn country.
Mrs. Hassan, who was born in Dublin, according to the British and Irish foreign offices, is married to an Iraqi and has lived here for 30 years, helping supply medicine and other humanitarian aid and speaking out about Iraqis' suffering under international sanctions during the 1990s.
She went to work for CARE International soon after it began operations in Iraq in 1991 after the first Gulf war, with programs focusing on rebuilding and maintaining water and sanitation systems, hospitals and clinics.
She thought of herself as an Iraqi and was one of the most experienced and highest profile aid workers in the country.
Shortly before the war last year, she visited Britain, where she warned Parliament that Iraq could face a humanitarian catastrophe in the event of a conflict.
At the time, she said that U.N. sanctions had left the Iraqi people in a worse situation than they had been at the end of the first Gulf war in 1991.
As U.S.-led forces massed for the invasion, Mrs. Hassan told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she would not leave "because I think it's important for my staff that I stay with them. The strength comes from us supporting one another."
A CARE spokeswoman in London described her as a private person, so much so that the organization knew little about her personal life. Her age was not available, and the organization did not even know where she had gone to school.
Her kidnapping was the latest attack against humanitarian organizations, many of which have curtailed operations and withdrawn international staff because of the violence in Iraq. It also follows a wave of abductions targeting foreigners in the heart of the capital. Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners in their campaign to drive out coalition forces.
Although militants have kidnapped seven other women in the past six months, all were later released. By contrast, at least 30 male hostages have been killed, including three Americans beheaded by their captors. Mrs. Hassan's abduction occurred less than two weeks after a video posted on an Islamic Web site showed the beheading of British hostage Kenneth Bigley.
The British government is weighing a U.S. request to shift some of the country's 9,000 soldiers from the relatively peaceful southern Iraq to areas south of Baghdad - presumably to free U.S. troops for an all-out assault on the insurgent bastion Fallujah.
British lawmakers are worried about sending their soldiers to the more volatile U.S.-controlled sector at a time when public opposition to the war in Britain has reduced Prime Minister Tony Blair's popularity.
The mortar attack on the Iraqi national guard occurred early yesterday when six mortar shells crashed onto a base in Mushahidah, 25 miles north of Baghdad. The troops were lined up in a courtyard for morning formation, according to Iraqi and multinational officials.
American helicopters helped ferry the wounded to U.S. hospitals in the area. Iraqi police and security units have been a frequent target of rebels trying to undermine U.S.-led security efforts ahead of January national elections.
An American contractor working for KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, was killed and a U.S. soldier was wounded during a pre-dawn mortar and rocket barrage yesterday at a garrison in Baghdad, officials said.
The three car bombs in Mosul, which killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded three, occurred between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., the military said. One bomb targeted a provincial convoy belonging to the governor of Nineveh province, though he was not in the convoy. Another hit a military coalition convoy, causing minor injuries to one U.S. soldier.
The wave of violence that has swept Iraq has convinced many humanitarian organizations - even those that have hung on through conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Balkans - that it is time to leave.
Last month, Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were kidnapped from their Baghdad offices. They were released after three weeks in captivity.
--------
THE INSURGENTS
Kidnappers Seize a Relief Official Working in Iraq
October 20, 2004
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/international/middleeast/20iraq.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 19 - The British-Iraqi director of CARE International in Iraq was kidnapped Tuesday as she rode in a car to her office, the latest in a string of Westerners abducted here, and hours later appeared in a televised videotape made by her abductors.
Margaret Hassan, a longtime advocate for Iraq and its people, was pulled from her car by a group of men, who beat her driver and guard with their rifle butts, one of her colleagues said.
Hours later, Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language television network, broadcast a video it had received showing Ms. Hassan seated in a room, looking distraught, as well as close-ups of her identification cards. Unlike previous videos released to television networks, no militants or banners were shown.
The station said that the video was accompanied by a claim of responsibility from an unidentified group and that it had not made any demands.
Ms. Hassan is married to an Iraqi, has lived in Iraq for 30 years and maintains dual nationality. Her husband, Tahseen Ali Hassan, told Al Jazeera from Baghdad, "We haven't heard anything about the group and no one has contacted us," Reuters reported.
The kidnapping comes less than two weeks after a British hostage, Kenneth Bigley, was beheaded by his abductors and is the latest in a wave of kidnappings of foreign nationals, including aid workers, contractors and journalists. Some appear to have been carried out by people whose primary goal is to expel American and British forces from the country, while others appear to be largely motivated by money. It was not immediately clear into which of those categories Ms. Hassan's abductors fell.
Ms. Hassan, 52, was one of the few Western nationals still working for a relief agency in Iraq. All but a handful left the country after the bombing of the United Nations headquarters here in August 2003, and nearly all the rest left last month, after the abduction of two Italian relief workers.
Ms. Hassan is widely respected in Baghdad and speaks fluent Arabic. The BBC reported that she was born in Dublin.
"She has been there three decades, over half her life, and considered herself to be more of an Iraqi national," said Kate Bulbulian, a spokesman for CARE International in London. "That is what her life is."
The British prime minister, Tony Blair, told reporters that he would do whatever he could to free her. But he said the government did not know who had abducted her.
"This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing their level best to help the country," he said. "I think it shows you the type of people we are up against."
Mr. Bigley's videotaped decapitation, which was preceded by two videos showing him pleading for Mr. Blair to help spare his life, caused considerable public trauma in Britain.
Ms. Hassan began working for CARE after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, but she has been involved in relief work for at least 25 years.
In Iraq, she heads a 60-member operation that has been working to rebuild health centers and labs, provide medical supplies to hospitals and restore access to clean water, Ms. Bulbulian said.
In 2003, shortly before the war, Ms. Hassan warned members of the BritishParliament that war would exact a huge toll on the country.
"The things that are most important about her is that she is such a huge advocate for Iraq and the Iraqi people and has been for years," said Donna Derr, associate director of emergency response at Church World Service, a relief group. "She always spoke out with great energy about how sanctions had impacted Iraqi citizens and just was a huge advocate. She was someone that did that consistently."
Also in Iraq on Tuesday, at least four Iraqis were killed and 80 were wounded in a mortar attack on an Iraqi National Guard base north of Baghdad. The soldiers had gathered for a head count when the first of seven mortar shells landed in the compound, witnesses said. Only three shells exploded.
Such attacks are aimed at punishing Iraqis who cooperate with the government and demoralizing the survivors. On the grounds of the base, in Mashahidan, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, the prevailing sentiment was not apathy but anger. Such attitudes may explain why, in part, despite the unrelenting attacks by the insurgents, recruits still line up to join the national guard.
"I will not kneel before these terrorists," said Qusay Hassan, a national guard recruit. "If I don't join the army, who is going to defend the country from the terrorists?"
Maj. Walid al-Mashadani, an Iraqi commander, spoke in a similarly defiant tone. "I will keep sacrificing myself for the sake of my country, and I will not give up my work," he said.
In a briefing on Tuesday, the commanders of the army unit in charge of Sadr City, the vast, poor neighborhood in northeast Baghdad, reported progress in disarming the Shiite militia there, saying the weapons buyout program had in some cases collected more of certain types of weapons than American commanders thought the militia had.
"We've had a lot of heavy weapons turned in, and in some categories we've had more than I thought they had," said Col. Abe Abrams, the commander of the First Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, which oversees Sadr City. He cited mortar tubes as an example.
The weapons buyout program was part of a larger agreement earlier this month with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, to disarm his militia and coax him toward the democratic political arena.
But Colonel Abrams said he was not ready to declare victory. "We're not there yet," he said. "The burden of proof remains on the militia."
He said he hoped the exchange would succeed but said he was still wary, given Mr. Sadr's record of broken promises. Of particular concern are the homemade bombs buried around Sadr City, most of them in the roads where they can hit American vehicles.
Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the commander of the First Cavalry Division, said aides to Mr. Sadr told military officials in the past week that at least 1,000 bombs were still buried in Sadr City.
In London, discussions continued about the American military request that the British government move some of its troops to areas around Baghdad to free American forces for combat missions.
Mr. Blair said he would only agree to deploy troops in areas near Baghdad if it made good military sense. "No decision will be taken to redeploy British troops unless it is clear militarily that that should and can happen," Mr. Blair said after a meeting with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.
The possibility that Britain may station troops in volatile areas, away from Basra, the British stronghold in the south, has raised concerns among lawmakers in Britain and led to charges that Mr. Blair was seeking to boost President Bush's re-election bid.
Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad for this article and Lizette Alvarez from London. Richard Oppel, in Baghdad, and Khalid al-Ansary, in Mashahidan, contributed reporting.
--------
US air strikes hit Iraqi rebel city, military denies civilian casualties
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041020175812.8ghyivdc.html
The US military unleashed four air strikes on the rebel-controlled city of Fallujah on Wednesday, destroying buildings said to belong to top Islamic militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and other rebel posts.
The military vigourously denied reports from the rebel-held enclave that the bombardments had destroyed a teachers' college and killed a family of six.
A pre-dawn raid targeted two Zarqawi safe houses in the northeast of the city, while a second air strike later took out "a known enemy command and control post" to the north, the US-led multi-national force said in a statement.
Two later strikes destroyed what the military described as "safe houses being used by the network in order to train personnel and store munitions".
"The safe houses included adjacent fighting positions shaped like bunkers," the statement read.
The military said the operations targeted the southern portion of the city where fighters were gathering.
"Intelligence reveals that anti-Iraqi forces have planned to use the holy month of Ramadan for attacks against the Iraqi Interim Government and innocent Iraqis," the military said.
The military also challenged reports of civilian casualties emerging from the city and blamed the accounts on a "known Zarqawi propagandist ... passing false reports to the media".
"Multi-national force-Iraq ... said today that media reports based on witnesses stating US aircraft struck a Female Teachers' Preparation Institute are not true. Another report stating a family of six was killed in a US raid in Fallujah is also not true."
But residents in Fallujah claimed they pulled a family of six from the ruins of a house hit in the dawn bombing.
"The house was completely destroyed by a missile dropped from an American plane and we have pulled from the rubble the bodies of four children, a woman and a man," said one resident, Bassem Mohammed.
It was impossible to independently verify either claim in the rebel-held city where it has not been safe for foreign journalists to enter for months.
US and Iraqi forces believe that Fallujah has provided a refuge for the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, and his followers.
Determined to regain control of the no-go zone, more than 1,000 joint forces have encircled the city since Friday. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi last week ordered Fallujah residents to surrender Zarqawi or face invasion. Humanitarian agencies have raised concerns for the welfare of residents in the Sunni Muslim bastion amid near nightly US air raids.
Allawi said Monday his government would send aid worth two million dollars to the city, while the International Committee of the Red Cross said it sent 1.5 tonnes of urgent medical and surgical equipment to a Fallujah hospital.
Jordan has urged US and Iraqi forces to lift their siege to help ease the hardships of residents during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Living conditions have deteriorated along with security in Fallujah, a city of 200,000 people that is often sealed off from the outside world. Residents who have fled the city warn of food shortages and power black-outs.
--------
300 Iraqi soldiers abandon unit in Samarra
USA TODAY
October 20, 2004
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=national&story_id=102004b1_iraq_guard
BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 300 Iraqi soldiers abandoned their 750-man unit after they were deployed to Samarra earlier this month as part of a U.S.-Iraqi operation to retake the militant-controlled city. Like similar incidents earlier this year in Fallujah and Baghdad's Sadr City, the desertions are prompting coalition officers to improve training for Iraqi recruits.
U.S. and Iraqi officials said Iraqi forces are needed to help retake and hold the toughest insurgent strongholds, including Fallujah, where as many as 1,000 militants are believed to be entrenched. Releasing the militants' grip on these areas will be key to holding elections, scheduled for January, and handing security over to Iraqi forces.
The Oct. 1-2 offensive in Samarra was the first major test of newly trained and equipped Iraqi security forces since April, when several battalions of national guard and army troops refused to fight in Fallujah and Baghdad's Sadr City after revolts.
Since then, the U.S.-led military coalition has upgraded training and provided more equipment and weapons to their Iraqi counterparts.
Coalition officials point out that the remaining 450 soldiers in the Iraqi Army's 7th Battalion performed bravely during the two-day battle in Samarra. The operation, which involved 2,000 Iraqi forces and 3,000 U.S. soldiers, succeeded in taking back the city about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
"Those are the guys who did well in Samarra," said British Army Brig. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, deputy commander of the coalition office for training and organizing Iraq's armed forces.
He said the deserters were spooked by an attack on Sept. 19, about a week after they had been deployed from Baghdad. A car bombing at a checkpoint killed one of the battalion's officers and injured eight soldiers, Aylwin-Foster said. About 100 deserted afterward.
By Sept. 24, even before the offensive kicked off in Samarra, 300 had left. Senior Iraqi officers were sent there in an effort to rally the battalion's remaining soldiers. Iraq's new security forces have been regularly targeted by insurgents in an effort to affect troop strength and morale. Yesterday, a mortar attack killed at least four Iraqi national guardsmen and injured 80 at a base north of Baghdad.
Iraqi national security adviser Kassim Daoud said yesterday he was not aware of the incident involving the 7th Battalion.
U.S. military officers say the operation in Samarra was a success despite the AWOL problems. The U.S. and Iraqi troops that retook the city in two days killed more than 100 insurgents and drove several hundred more from the city. "They performed very well," said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division based in Tikrit.
While the offensive in Samarra was considered a success, the desertions illustrate the challenges facing the coalition as it builds Iraqi security forces.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli defence chiefs bid to crush calls to disobey Gaza pullout orders
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041020153115.fw0vpyeo.html
Israeli military authorities have launched a fierce counter-attack to calls by right-wing rabbis, who have urged soldiers to disobey any orders to uproot settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Religious leaders such as the former chief rabbi Avraham Shapira have been urging members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) not to take part in the "sinful" transfer of Jews from the territory, as planned for next year by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
While the disengagement plan has led to deep divisions within the country, the defence establishment is determined to ensure that troops are not dragged into the debate and start questioning orders from their superiors.
General Elazar Stern, head of the military personnel division, was due to discuss the issue Wednesday with the rabbis who head up religious military schools, but they cancelled talks at the last minute, the website of the Haaretz daily reported.
"Given the current situation, we believe that conditions are not right for this discussion," one of the rabbis told the paper, without giving further details.
On Tuesday army chief of staff General Moshe Yaalon and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz both warned rabbis not to meddle in army affairs.
"Insubordination is dangerous to us as an army, as a society and as a nation," said Yaalon at a military ceremony.
"This is not legitimate and is inappropriate. Insubordination is a danger to Zionism. IDF commanders and soldiers carry out missions given by the government and will continue to do so professionally, and with the appropriate sensitivity necessitated by the complexity of the missions at hand.
"Calls by political and spiritual leaders to refuse (to carry out an order) put commanders and soldiers in difficult dilemmas. The missions are complicated, and the burden on the commanders is heavy."
Mofaz, himself a former chief of staff, also slapped down any talk of insubordination.
"I admire and respect men of Torah and the rabbis, but the call by certain rabbis for refusal is intolerable and must be condemned," he said in a speech in Tel Aviv.
"Refusal will lead to disintegration. I urge the rabbis who called for refusal --- recant, don't disintegrate us. Keep the IDF and the security services out of political and diplomatic controversies."
However, in a sign that right-wing rabbis will not easily be silenced, around 60 of them put their name to a petition in a full-page advert in Wednesday's Hatzofe newspaper, the mouthpiece of the settler movement, in support of Shapira.
"Staunch congratulations are hereby sent to the eminent luminary, head of Merkaz Harav yeshiva (religious school) and former chief rabbi of Israel, our teacher and mentor Rabbi Avraham Elkana Kahane Shapira, may he live a long life," said the advert signed by the self-styled "Jews Do Not Expel Jews" organisation.
Rabbi Yaakov Shapira told AFP his father's appeal "will create a pressure effect on the political class and the prime minister" in order that they abandon plans to pull all 8,000 Jewish residents out of the Gaza Strip next year.
The council of Yesha rabbis, which represents settlers in both Gaza and the West Bank, also declared its support for Shapira and called on soldiers to refuse to evacuate fellow Jews.
The opinion of the rabbis, however, is far from unanimous, with others agreeing that the refusal calls represent a threat to the state. "The appeal from Rabbi Shapira endangers the future of the state of Israel," said Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun, leader of a yeshiva at the Hadati Kibbutz in southern Israel.
Kibbutz leaders released a statement urging the rabbis "not to involve the IDF in the debate over the withdrawal plan" while also underlining its opposition to the project and calling for a national referendum.
--------
Israel arrests 2,500 Palestinian children
(Xinhuanet)
Oct. 20, 2004
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/21/content_2118600.htm
GAZA, -- A total of 2,500 Palestinian childrenhave been arrested since the intifada (uprising) against an Israelioccupation began four years ago, the Palestinian Ministry ofPrisoners said in a report on Wednesday.
Of the total, 391 children were still in the Israeli Jails, andmore than 400 were under 18 when they were arrested. According to the report, 7 percent of the jailed children wereill and needed health care, while 83 percent were school students. It said that one Palestinian child was sentenced to lifeimprisonment, three to 15 years, four to between five and nineyears and many others to between one and three years on charge ofbelonging to Palestinian organizations.
Some children were sentenced to between six and 18 months forthrowing stones at Israeli soldiers.
-------- mideast
Turkish Cypriot government quits
BBC
20 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3758638.stm
The Turkish Cypriot minority government has resigned, ditching efforts to forge a new coalition after a failed referendum to reunite the island.
Rauf Denktash, the leader of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, accepted the resignation.
Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat will stay in office until a new government is formed.
Mr Talat's coalition has been paralysed since it lost its slim parliamentary majority in April.
Mr Denktash will meet with party leaders in the coming days to discuss the possibility of forming a new government.
If a government cannot be formed, early elections will be called and are likely to be held within 60 days.
"If we can't succeed in forming a new government our people will decide" in new elections, Mr Talat said.
"We will carry out responsibilities fully until a new government is formed."
Failed poll
Several parliamentarians resigned from the two parties in the coalition following a failed referendum in April on a UN plan to reunite the island, reducing it to a minority government.
The coalition, which came to power earlier this year, is made up of Mr Talat's Republican Turkish Party and the Democrat Party.
Mr Talat supported the plan, but his coalition partner, Serdar Denktash, did not.
Turkish Cypriots in the north of the island voted for the plan, but it was defeated when Greek Cypriots in the south rejected it.
As a result, the benefits of joining the EU only apply to the Greek Cypriot part of the island.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was declared in 1983, but has been recognised only by Turkey itself.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia must end 'appalling' military hazing: HRW
MOSCOW (AFP)
Oct 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041020153150.uixnv4zf.html
Rampant hazing in Russia's armed forces leads to dozens of deaths, hundreds of attempted suicides and thousands of desertions each year, said a report released here Wednesday by Human Rights Watch.
"It's time for the Russian government to put a stop to this appalling practice," the New York-based rights group said ahead of the release of the report, which was based on three years of research.
Nearly all of the estimated 800,000 conscripts in the Russian armed forces -- the backbone of the million-strong military -- go through the hazing mill where first-year conscripts serve as virtual slaves to their second-year colleagues.
"Under a system called 'dedovshchina' or 'rule of the grandfathers,' second-year conscripts force new recruits to live in a year-long state of pointless servitude," it said.
"They can order them to do whatever they like, no matter how demeaning or absurd the task," it said. "If a first-year conscript refuses to oblige or fails in the assigned task, the senior conscript is free to administer whatever punishment he deems appropriate, no matter how violent."
"Dozens of conscripts are killed every year as a result of these abuses," it said, without providing specific figures. "Hundreds commit or attempt suicide and thousands run away from their units."
An unnamed source at the defense ministry told the Interfax news agency in April that 78 members of the armed forces, including 24 officers, have committed suicide so far this year.
"The government's indifference toward hazing is startling," HRW said in a press release ahead of the report. "How can a country that is so concerned with its military strength ignore a practice that so clearly undermines it?"
The rampant hazing -- which results in "lawlessness and gross abuse of human rights" -- has meant that most of Russia's conscripts come from the poorer section of the populace.
"Horror stories about dedovshchina motivate tens of thousands of Russian parents every year to try to keep their sons out of the armed forces," said the report.
"As the most affluent and educated families do so most successfully, the armed forces increasingly draw recruits from poor segments of the population and many of the recruits suffer from malnutrition, ill-health, alcohol or drug addiction, or other social ills even before they start to serve."
HRW called on Russian authorities to address the problem, to which it charges they have turned a blind eye.
"Instead of taking a clear and public stance against the abuses, government officials have largely ignored the issue in their numerous speeches about military reform," the report said.
HRW researchers met with defense ministry officials to discuss the result of their study in February 2004, but were dissapointed by the encounter.
"It was a tense meeting," HRW's Alexander Petrov said at a press conference during which the report was released. "We got the impression that they looked (upon the report) with a lot of suspicion."
"Human Rights Watch calles on President Vladimir Putin to create a task force to design a comprehensive strategy for combating dedovshchina abuses and to implement that strategy," the report said.
--------
Russian army bullying 'horrific'
bbc
20 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3756866.stm
Some soldiers are said to face severe bullying during conscription International group Human Rights Watch has published a detailed study of what it calls "horrific violence" against new conscripts in the Russian army.
The report says organised bullying has not only continued since Soviet times, but has become harsher.
Human Rights Watch says that although the abuse has been known about for several years, Russia's leadership has done nothing to address the problem.
The report claims hundreds are killed or commit suicide as a result.
Tens of thousands of soldiers run away, while thousands more are left physically and or mentally scarred, the organisation says in its reports entitled The Wrongs of Passage.
The ritual of organised bullying is known as "dedovshchina" - a self-perpetuating system, with two draft periods a year where conscripts enlist for two years.
That means that at any time there are four distinct groups of conscripts in any barracks.
Dedovshchina especially concerns the senior soldiers - in their last six months - and the newest recruits.
The one way to avoid physical abuse is complete submission Conscript Alexander D
History blamed for bully culture
The seniors (known as "dedy") are in many cases given free rein to treat the juniors as little more than slaves, says BBC Russian affairs analyst Stephen Dalziel.
If the juniors do not do as they are told, the seniors often use violence to enforce their rule.
One conscript, Alexander D, told Human Rights Watch that "the one way to avoid physical abuse was complete submission - turning into a 'lackey' who does whatever he is asked no matter how humiliating or senseless".
He says he was repeatedly beaten for refusing to sew collars on senior soldiers' jackets. Another time Alexander D's belongings were taken away and he was sent out, along with others, to beg for money to buy vodka.
First-year conscripts could also be forced to act out an old army joke called "dried crocodile", he says.
The conscripts had to put their hands and feet on the posts at the head and feet of the bed and remain in push-up position for long periods of time.
"They [the dedy] lie down on the bed [beneath you] and God forbid you fall. They beat you up and then start from scratch. Sometimes they even burn your leg from down there... when they were drunk they could make you hang all night."
Ombudsman
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that most conscripts are ill-educated and frequently come from backgrounds with severe social problems, the report says.
Our analyst adds that many junior officers either do not care about the welfare of their soldiers, or passively encourage the bullying as it gives a certain "discipline" to the barrack block.
Human Rights Watch concludes that the very least that could be done would be the establishment of an ombudsman to protect the rights of Russian servicemen.
It says such an ombudsman should have the right of access to military bases at any time, to speak in private to any serviceman, and access to documents and correspondence from soldiers who are often too terrified to speak of their ordeal.
-------- spies
CIA backs away from Al Qaeda tip
October 20, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041019-103107-5967r.htm
A CIA informant provided false information about an impending al Qaeda attack, but other intelligence sources reveal that the danger of a major strike by the group close to the upcoming elections is real, U.S. officials said.
"We are concerned because a number of different threat reports we've received over the past few months indicate terrorists plan to disrupt the democratic process," said one official with access to intelligence reports.
Officials said that since the spring, numerous information sources, both electronic and human, have indicated that al Qaeda is planning a major attack on the United States or on U.S. targets abroad before the Nov. 2 election.
But officials said several threat reports from April and May have been found to be "a deception" designed to fool U.S. intelligence agencies.
The bogus source made statements that were determined by intelligence officials to have been "not credible," the officials said.
The bogus source said al Qaeda wanted to affect the democratic process in the United States just as an affiliated group did by bombing trains in Madrid on March 11. The attack, three days before the Spanish elections, killed 191 persons and prompted Spaniards to vote out of power a pro-American, conservative government.
The source had no indication of when or how that would be done, or by whom. There have been no recent intelligence reports of al Qaeda plans for attacks.
However, several other sources of intelligence indicated that al Qaeda is planning to disrupt the elections, officials said.
A second official said that the intelligence stating that a major attack is coming was derived from a variety of sources and that the false report has not led to changes in current threat assessments.
"Is there still reason to be concerned that al Qaeda is interested in attacking the homeland? Absolutely," the official said.
As for the false source, the second official said intelligence always comes from sources of varying reliability.
"We get lots of information; some of it is reliable, and some of it's not so reliable," the official said.
No plans exist to raise the national alert level beyond the heightened (yellow) threat levels. In August, the threat of attack was raised to high (orange) for financial centers in New York, northern New Jersey and Washington.
"We have no plans to raise the threat level based on current threat assessments," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department.
Information about a terrorist attack was obtained after several key arrests of al Qaeda members in Britain and Pakistan, including one member whose laptop computer revealed secret about al Qaeda plans.
Officials also dismissed the worries expressed by Sen. Mark Dayton, Minnesota Democrat, who announced Oct. 15 that he was closing his Washington office because of threats of a terrorist attack in the Capitol.
A CIA briefing to lawmakers discussed a "worst-case" scenario of a terrorist attack, but gave no specific indication of an attack. The CIA assessment was "pure analysis" based on uncorroborated-threat reports of what would happen if al Qaeda conducted a major attack, one official said.
--------
'CATASTROPHIC SUCCESS'
Poor Intelligence Misled Troops About Risk of Drawn-Out War
October 20, 2004
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/international/20war.html?ei=5094&en=3f10c2ce8810a771&hp=&ex=1098331200&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1098320590-jLCqOBj9BvhetIcoHiv70Q&pagewanted=all&position=
In early 2003, as the clock ticked down toward the war with Iraq, C.I.A. officials met with senior military commanders at Camp Doha, Kuwait, to discuss their latest ideas for upending Saddam Hussein's government.
Intelligence officials were convinced that American soldiers would be greeted warmly when they pushed into southern Iraq, so a C.I.A. operative suggested sneaking hundreds of small American flags into the country for grateful Iraqis to wave at their liberators. The agency would capture the spectacle on film and beam it throughout the Arab world. It would be the ultimate information operation.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of allied ground forces, quickly objected. To avoid being perceived as an occupying army, American forces had been instructed not to brandish the flag.
The idea was dropped, but the C.I.A.'s optimism remained.
The agency believed that many of the towns were "ours," said one former staff officer who attended the session. "At first, it was going to be U.S. flags," he said, "and then it was going to be Iraqi flags. The flags are probably still sitting in a bag somewhere. One of the towns where they said we would be welcomed was Nasiriya, where Marines faced some of the toughest fighting in the war."
Just as the intelligence about Iraq's presumed stockpiles of unconventional weapons proved wrong, so did much of the information provided to those prosecuting the war and planning the occupation.
In a major misreading of Iraq's strategy, the C.I.A. failed to predict the role played by Saddam Hussein's paramilitary forces, which mounted the main attacks on American troops in southern Iraq and surprised them in bloody battles.
The agency was aware that Iraq was awash in arms but failed to identify the huge caches of weapons that were hidden in mosques and schools to supply enemy fighters.
On postwar Iraq, American intelligence agencies underestimated the decrepit state of Iraq's infrastructure, which became a major challenge in reconstructing the nation, and concluded erroneously that Iraq's police had had extensive professional training.
And while intelligence experts noted an insurgency in its catalog of possible dangers, it did not highlight that threat.
The National Intelligence Council, senior experts from the intelligence community, prepared an analysis in January 2003 on postwar Iraq that discussed the risk of an insurgency in the last paragraph of its 38-page assessment. "There was never a buildup of intelligence that says: 'It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. This is the end you should prepare for,' " said Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the former head of the United States Central Command and now retired, referring to the insurgency. "It did not happen. Never saw it. It was never offered."
The Central Intelligence Agency has come under harsh criticism for its failings on Iraq's weapons and the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and critics have urged that it be overhauled as part of a broad reform of the nation's intelligence community.
The agency declined requests for interviews for this article and declined to respond to written questions submitted to its chief spokesman.
Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director who was asked by the agency to review its intelligence analysis on the Iraq war, said in an interview that much American intelligence on postwar Iraq was on the mark, particularly the assessment predicting the resentment of Iraqis if the United States did not transfer power quickly to a new Iraqi government. Still, he acknowledged some deficiencies.
"Intelligence assessments on the likely Iraqi impatience with an extended U.S. presence and the role of the army in Iraqi society were particularly prescient," Mr. Kerr said.
"The intelligence accurately forecast the reactions of the ethnic and tribal factions in Iraq," he said. "These positive comments, however, cannot gloss over the fact that Iraq revealed some serious systemic problems in the intelligence community. Collection was poor. Too much emphasis was placed on current intelligence and there was too little research on important social, political and cultural issues."
Trying to Catch Up
Despite more than a decade of antagonism between Saddam Hussein's government and the United States, the Bush administration was operating with limited information when it began to consider the invasion of Iraq. After the 1991 Persian Gulf war, collecting intelligence on Iraq was not always the top priority for American spy agencies, which were burdened by a multitude of potential crises and threats.
Iraq was considered a Tier 2 country. North Korea, in contrast, was Tier 1. As the agencies saw it, North Korea possessed an active nuclear weapons program and a large conventional army in striking range of South Korea and the American forces there. Iraq was seen more as a gathering threat.
The months before the war were a scramble for more intelligence. The American military did its best to fill the gaps, using Predator drones, U-2 spy planes and other surveillance systems. The land forces command printed 100,000 maps of the southern Iraq oilfields, which the Marines were to secure. Detailed block by block analyses were prepared for downtown Baghdad.
Iraq, in intelligence parlance, was a "glass ball environment," meaning the weather was often conducive to collecting images from above.
Much of the intelligence was derived from reconnaissance systems, not from operatives on the ground. With few spies inside Iraq, the agency relied on defectors, detainees, opposition groups and foreign government services, according to a Senate report.
"Some critics have claimed during the prewar period, we did not have many Iraqi sources, " James L. Pavitt, former deputy director for operations for the agency, said in June in a speech to the Foreign Policy Association.
"We certainly did not have enough," he said. "Until we put people on the ground in northern Iraq, we had less than a handful. As I mentioned before, the operating environment was tremendously prohibitive, and developing the necessary trust with those Iraqis who had access was extraordinarily difficult in light of the risks they faced. Once on the ground, however, our officers recruited literally dozens of agents - some of whom paid the ultimate price for their allegiance to us."
The C.I.A. inserted agents in the southern oil fields shortly before the war. American intelligence officers obtained the telephone numbers of Iraqi generals and called to encourage them not to fight. Fearful that the calls were a loyalty test by Saddam Hussein, some changed their numbers, which hindered their efforts to talk to each other when the war was under way.
The United States gained a detailed understanding of Iraq's oil infrastructure and obtained a secret map of Iraq's Baghdad defense plan. The C.I.A. also helped debunk one threat that the military had worried about: the possibility that Mr. Hussein's government would flood the country to thwart an allied advance.
The agency, though, turned out to have a less clear understanding of what the United States would face once it invaded Iraq, or of Mr. Hussein's military strategy. In January 2003, the National Intelligence Council issued its assessment of what might happen after the dictator was ousted. The report cautioned that building democracy in Iraq would be difficult because of its authoritarian history. And it warned of the risk that the American forces would be seen as occupiers.
"Attitudes toward a foreign military force would depend largely on the progress made in transferring power, as well as on the degree to which that force were perceived as providing necessary security and fostering reconstruction and a return to prosperity," it said. The report also noted that quick restoration of services would be important to maintain the support of the Iraqi public.
Broader Picture Was Missing
But the analysis was less prescient on other points.
The study underestimated the fragile state of Iraq's infrastructure, suggesting it could be fixed quickly if it were not extensively damaged in the fighting. "Iraqis have restored their physical infrastructure quickly in previous wars," it stated. The United States chose not to attack the electrical grid, knowing that it would soon need to administer and reconstruct Iraq. But the electrical system collapsed from long neglect, and difficulties in restoring the service left much of the capital in darkness and aggravated residents' fears about crime.
In assessing potential threats, the intelligence report also gave far more weight to the possibility of score-settling among Iraqi ethnic groups than to an insurgency. The discussion of that prospect was remarkably brief.
"The ability of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to maintain a presence in northern Iraq (or more clandestinely elsewhere) would depend largely on whether a new regime were able to exert effective security and control over the entire country," it noted. "In addition, rogue ex-regime elements could forge an alliance with existing terrorist organizations or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare against a new government or coalition forces."
Mr. Kerr, the former C.I.A. official, said the agency's regional experts were more concerned than the assessment by the National Intelligence Council about the potential threat of guerrilla attacks by paramilitary forces after Mr. Hussein's government was toppled, particularly if American troops stayed in Iraq for a significant period of time. But he acknowledged that the assessments did not anticipate the sort of virulent insurgency that Americans forces now face in Iraq.
"They did believe there would be a fairly significant stay-behind group of Saddam loyalists and fedayeen that would attract outside support," he said. "But it would be stretching it to reach too far down this line. I could not justify saying that they predicted the war as it has developed."
Gaps Become Apparent
From the start of the war, it was clear that some of the intelligence was off.
On March 19, 2003, for example, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told the White House that he had firm evidence that Mr. Hussein and his family were in a suburb near Baghdad known as Dora Farms. The Iraqi leader and his two sons were thought to be hiding in a concrete bunker; the C.I.A. provided exact coordinates.
Lt. Gen. Michael (Buzz) Moseley, the air war commander, who was at an air base in Saudi Arabia, quickly developed a plan for stealth fighters to drop satellite-guided bombs, followed by cruise missiles. The planes hit their targets. But when American forces got to Dora Farms after the fall of Baghdad, they discovered there was no underground bunker at that site, General Moseley said in an interview last year.
The Iraqis responded to the attack by firing missiles at American forces in Kuwait. American intelligence learned that a small number of oil wells had been set on fire, so the land war was accelerated.
Senior military officers and intelligence analysts had expected that the Iraqi leader would center his defense in Baghdad, and planned for a decisive battle against his Republican Guard divisions and special military and paramilitary units in the capital. The American forces discovered in the first days of the war that the Iraqis had a different strategy. The Marines learned this the hard way.
Task Force Tarawa, a Marine unit assigned to secure the bridges in eastern Nasiriya, was told that a C.I.A. source had reported that Iraq's 11th Infantry Division, which was to guard the bridges, would probably surrender. Convinced that Nasiriya would be a relatively easy fight, senior Marine commanders did not make any reconnaissance drones available.
The fight in Nasiriya turned out to be one of the toughest of the war. Thousands of paramilitary fighters, the Saddam Fedayeen, had taken up positions there and in the other southern cities, including Samawa and Najaf, determined to put down any Shiite rebellion and to draw the Americans into bloody bouts of urban warfare. In Nasiriya, the Marines' mission was complicated when the Army 507th Maintenance Battalion - made famous when Pfc. Jessica Lynch was taken prisoner - stumbled into the city. The Marines suffered 18 dead the first day, some by American fire, after it ran into hordes of Iraqi fighters.
"All indications were that it would not be much of a fight, that the Iraqis were probably going to capitulate," recalled Joseph Apodaca, a retired lieutenant colonel who served as the intelligence officer for the task force that fought in Nasiriya. "After that contact in Nasiriya, I lost quite a bit of faith in national-level reporting."
Flawed intelligence led to other units' being caught by surprise, too. In Samawa, the Army's Third Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment had been told, based on intelligence reports, to be prepared to conduct a parade to show solidarity with the inhabitants.
Sgt. First Class Anthony Broadhead, who led a group of Bradley fighting vehicles and M-1 tanks into the city, was standing in the hatch of his tank and waving when the Iraqis responded by shooting. A fierce firefight between the soldiers and the paramilitary forces broke out.
"The fighting that occurred in Samawa was not with conventional Iraqi forces but with Saddam Fedayeen and Baath Party members," noted Lt. Col. Terry Ferrell, the unit's commander. "In the intelligence summaries, we had heard about this type of enemy, but they had not been given any credit for being as tenacious and capable of fighting as they demonstrated not only in this battle, but in every other fight the squadron encountered."
The flawed information provided to the units in Nasiriya and Samawa were not the only lapses. American intelligence knew Iraq had huge quantities of conventional weapons, but did not realize that arms caches has been established in schools, hospitals and mosques as part of the strategy to turn the southern cities into bastions for the Saddam Fedayeen.
"What intelligence did not reveal was the magnitude of the regime's weapons holdings," the First Marine Division noted in its after-action report. "Huge caches were hidden in every area of the country, but it was only after the division closed on those facilities that the full magnitude of the distribution of tons of weapons and ammunition throughout the country came to light."
The failure of the American intelligence agencies to detect the paramilitary forces in the south made it harder to anticipate the potential for an insurgency, Colonel Apodaca said. "They are good at reaching into the higher levels of organizations, but those guys don't see clearly what is going on at the bottom," he said.
An American general who asked not be identified because of the sensitivity of his position said: "I think it is safe to say we had an accurate picture of their forces in terms of their general capability and size. But we did not have a good sense of how they were intended to be used. We started out with a deficit of human intelligence, of sources inside."
Misreading the Consequences
Even in the last days of Mr. Hussein's government, some preliminary reports suggested that a guerrilla campaign could emerge once he was toppled.
On April 5, 2003, a Defense Intelligence Agency task force said the Baathists had made plans to wage a protracted guerrilla war and would form a tactical alliance with Islamic jihadists. Their goal, the task force said, was to produce casualties so that the American public would push for United States forces to quit Iraq.
On April 9, American intelligence agencies issued a "sense of the community" memo - their collective judgment - which concluded that Baath Party cadres, Iraqi security forces and paramilitary fighters were operating independently under longstanding orders. They could be expected to fight on until they were neutralized, Saddam Hussein was killed or senior Iraqi leaders whom they respected ordered them to stop fighting. Even then, the memo said, some would fight on.
Later, after the fall of Baghdad, American intelligence would learn more about preparations that had been made for a guerrilla campaign. The Iraq Survey Group, which was sent to Iraq primarily to search for evidence of unconventional weapons, uncovered some documents. The papers concerning Falluja, Iraq's most volatile city, identified storage areas for weapons caches and provided the names of 75 Saddam Fedayeen and 12 suicide volunteers who were expected to join in the fight.
The battle for the future of Iraq has only intensified as the insurgency has become entrenched. It has now taken thousands of lives, crippled reconstruction, threatened election of a new Iraqi government and forced American troops to engage in a grueling guerrilla conflict. The C.I.A. and other intelligence services are deeply involved in gathering information to help subdue the rebels controlling some of Iraq's cities, trying to fill in the gaps that existed when the Americans invaded Iraq.
"We understood their conventional force, their missiles programs, their air force," recalled Maj. Gen. James M. (Spider) Marks, now retired, who served as the chief intelligence officer for the land war command. "The elements of power which we could assess from a distance we assessed quite well. What we missed was the fine granularity that you get from a physical presence on the ground, by interacting with the Iraqi people over the years. Since 1991, we lost our finger on the pulse of the Iraqi people and built intelligence assessments from a distance. We did not appreciate the 'fear factor' and the grip that the regime had on the people."
-------- us
Unit first to balk in 175,000 Iraq convoy missions
October 20, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041019-103121-9943r.htm
The Army has operated more than 175,000 resupply convoys in Iraq since March 2003 without other incidents of disobedience such as the one during the weekend in which 18 soldiers refused to deliver fuel to an air base north of Baghdad.
Army officials say the actions of a relatively few soldiers in the 343rd Quartermaster Company, an Army Reserve unit, were not representative of morale in other Army units in Iraq. One focus of the investigation is whether the soldiers' chain of command stayed aware of equipment or morale problems.
"To our knowledge, there have been no reported incidents of soldiers potentially disobeying orders in combat areas of operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan," said Col. Joe Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "There is absolutely no indication this is a systemic problem."
Some of the balking soldiers complained of poorly maintained and unarmored trucks as one reason they refused to make the long road trip from Nasariyah, south of Baghdad, to an air base north of the capital. Insurgents have targeted such truck convoys, using ambushes and hidden roadside bombs known as "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs.
The incident highlights the Bush administration's failure to anticipate the concerted and deadly insurgency in Iraq. The Army did not harden support vehicles with added armor plating until the anti-coalition fighters counterattacked last fall. Since then, the Army has worked furiously to "up armor" those vehicles and has completed about half the fleet. The trucks assigned to the disobedient soldiers in the 343rd had not gotten the armor upgrade.
"We didn't anticipate what would happen in regard to attacking convoys," said retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis. "An insurgency such as this is very difficult in these types of strung-out operations."
Col. Maginnis has investigated past incidents in which soldiers failed to obey orders and has taught the history of such incidents at the Army infantry school. He said that although the Korea and Vietnam wars had numerous incidents of soldiers refusing orders, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have seen only the one incident.
Brig. Gen. James Chambers, who leads the 13th Corps Support Command, has ordered his deputy commander and the corps' inspector general to conduct investigations into three areas: whether criminal charges should be filed, unit morale and safety lapses. Gen. Chambers ordered a unit "stand down" while soldiers check operating procedures.
Investigators initially separated the 18 soldiers and attempted to get statements. An Army official said all but five soldiers have returned to the unit. Those five, including two noncommissioned officers, remain on inactive status as they get "special scrutiny" from investigators.
"They had previous disciplinary problems," the official said.
The inspector general will look at the chain of command to see whether the company commander had been abreast of unit dissatisfaction or complaints.
"I think for the most part the Army has handled it pretty well," Col. Maginnis said.
Convoy duty in Iraq is hazardous. Insurgents prey on shipments of fuel, food, water and ammunition in hopes of dampening morale and cutting off supplies to coalition combat units.
Convoys took heavy hits in the early days of the insurgency in the fall of 2003. Since then, the Army has added escorts of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and attack helicopters.
In the 175,000 convoy missions, 24 soldiers have been killed, according to the Pentagon.
On an average day, there are 250 convoys on the roads of Iraq, containing a total 2,500 vehicles and more than 5,000 soldiers. Every 24 hours, they deliver 110,000 cases of bottled water, 200,000 meals and 1 million gallons of fuel.
--------
Iraq Casualties
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A18
Iraq Casualties
Number of total U.S. military deaths and names of the U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war as announced by the Pentagon yesterday:
1,102
Fatalities
In hostile actions:
846
In non-hostile actions:
256
Sgt. Michael G. Owen, 31, of Phoenix.
Spec. Jonathan J. Santos, 22, of Whatcom, Wash.
Both of the Army 9th Psychological Operations Battalion, 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), based at Fort Bragg, N.C. Both were killed Oct. 15 in Karabilah.
Capt. Christopher B. Johnson, 29, of Excelsior Springs, Mo.
Chief Warrant Officer William I. Brennan, 36, of Bethlehem, Conn.
Both of the 1st Battalion, 25th Aviation, 25th Infantry Division (Light), based at Wheeler Army Air Field, Hawaii. Both were killed Oct. 16 in Baghdad when their helicopter collided with another helicopter and crashed.
All troops were killed in action unless otherwise indicated.
Total fatalities include three civilian employees of the Defense Department.
A full list of casualties is available online at www.washingtonpost.com/nation.
SOURCE: Defense Department's www.defenselink.mil/newsThe Washington Post
--------
Army Reservist in Abuse Scandal Pleads Guilty to Five Charges
October 20, 2004
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/international/middleeast/20CND-ABUS.html?hp&ex=1098331200&en=13a04fbb8fa9083c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 20 - The highest-ranking soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal pleaded guilty today to five counts of abusing prisoners and told a court-martial how he manually forced prisoners to masturbate together, sucker-punched a hooded detainee and strapped wires to another prisoner who feared he would be electrocuted if he fell from a box.
Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, a 38-year-old Army reservist and prison guard from Virginia, pleaded guilty at a military base in western Baghdad to conspiracy, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, assault and indecent acts. His plea requires him to cooperate and testify in the prosecution of other abuse cases.
Mr. Frederick told the judge, Col. James Pohl, that he was following the lead of officers but that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
"I was wrong about what I did and I shouldn't have done it," Mr. Frederick said, referring specifically to the wiring episode. "I knew it was wrong at the time because I knew it was a form of abuse."
Mr. Frederick said an Army investigator had wanted the wired-up prisoner "stressed out" to talk more and that it didn't matter how badly he was treated "as long as you don't kill him."
Mr. Frederick also acknowledged involvement in the scenes of Iraqi prisoners piled naked on top of one another. Prosecutors called as a witness an Iraqi who said he had been forced into a prisoner pile and also made to masturbate in front of other prisoners.
"I felt humiliated but I had nothing to kill myself with," the Iraqi told the court-martial. The military asked that his name be withheld for his own safety.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- death penalty
Foes of Death Penalty Making Gradual Gains in Africa
October 20, 2004
By MARC LACEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/international/africa/20uganda.html?pagewanted=all
KAMPALA, Uganda - The worst thing about death row at the notorious Luzira Maximum Prison outside Kampala is not the grim physical conditions, although Edmary Mpagi, who knows the place well, says they are grim indeed.
Nor is it the bad food or the occasionally violent cellmates. It is the waiting that can drive a prisoner mad, Mr. Mpagi said, the years of anticipation, never knowing exactly when the hangman will arrive.
That waiting is all the worse if one happens to be innocent, as Mr. Mpagi was found to be after living for 18 years in the shadow of the gallows at Luzira.
The man Mr. Mpagi was convicted of killing in 1982 was actually alive and well for all the years Mr. Mpagi sat behind bars. There was fabricated evidence, coerced testimony and a generally slipshod trial - all things that legal experts say are not as uncommon as they ought to be here.
Mr. Mpagi emerged from prison in July 2000 showing surprisingly little bitterness. Much of his time now is spent on a campaign against government-sponsored killing.
He is part of a growing movement trying to wipe out the death penalty in Africa. The critics say they face formidable obstacles from politicians and everyday people fed up with lawbreaking and intent on severely punishing those who engage in it.
Religion is one of the hurdles. Islamic courts in Nigeria continue to sentence women found guilty of adultery to death by stoning, although higher courts have repeatedly blocked such killings.
The biblical eye for an eye is also a factor. In one bizarre case in Congo, a Kinshasa court sentenced a prosecutor to death because he had been conducting his own private trials of defendants, not only sentencing them to death but also executing them himself. Soon he will probably die too.
But foes of the death penalty say they are making steady progress, with fewer Africans than ever before being hanged, beaten, shot, shocked, stoned or poisoned by their governments.
Fifteen years ago only one African country, the island of Cape Verde off Africa's west coast, did not have capital punishment on its books, activists say. Today 10 countries have outlawed the death penalty, according to a recent tally compiled by Amnesty International, and another 10 have abolished it in practice.
The anti-execution movement has been especially powerful in West Africa, where the number of countries in the Economic Community of West African States that have either banned executions or halted them has risen to 10, from one.
Southern Africa has also been moving away from capital punishment. It is outlawed in five countries in the Southern African Development Community: Angola, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. While it is still on the books in Malawi and Zambia, the presidents of those countries have said they will not to sign execution orders.
In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki has commuted the sentences of nearly 200 people on death row and vowed not to allow any government-sponsored killings on his watch.
Tallying how many executions occur each year in Africa is difficult, activists say, because many countries carry out the killings quietly to avoid unwanted attention. Not so in Uganda, where 417 people languish on death row, and where radio stations inform listeners of coming executions and daily papers have been known to recount the grisly details on their front pages.
The last executions in Uganda were in March 2003, when military firing squads killed three soldiers convicted of murder. The gallows at Luzira, the main prison where civilians await execution, have not been used since 1999, when 28 men were hanged.
Uganda would seem to be fertile ground for death penalty foes. It was here, after all, that Idi Amin vented his rage on his populace, unleashing soldiers on anyone deemed a critic. During his brutal rule in the 1970's Mr. Amin had no use for a death row. People were just summarily shot.
Those days are past. Relative calm has come to the country, although there is still a rebel insurgency in the north and human rights groups continue to criticize the government for sporadic acts of torture.
But it is crime that many consider the biggest hazard, and that is what motivates death penalty advocates. Those who dare to take the life of another, violate a woman or commit a crime while wielding a gun ought to pay with their lives, proponents say.
What about false prosecutions, opponents like Mr. Mpagi ask. What about cruel and unusual punishment? What about evidence that suggests that having a death penalty does not deter people from killing, raping or robbing?
Then there are the less conventional arguments offered by opponents of the death penalty.
Some critics point out that the death penalty is a phenomenon introduced into the Ugandan legal code by British colonialists. Before colonialism, they add, African tribes preferred mediation to retribution.
Joseph Etima, the commissioner of prisons, who is also a critic, argues that such killings are unfair to the prison guards who must end the prisoners' lives.
Executioners become drunkards and lose their minds after years of manning the noose, Mr. Etima says. "The first execution they do throws them out of balance," he said. "They isolate themselves from others. They suffer hallucinations. Socially, people fear them, even their families. Everybody keeps away from these guys out of fear that they are going to hang them."
Opponents hoped to wipe out capital punishment this year as the country goes about rewriting its Constitution. But the blue-ribbon commission charged with reviewing the document recommended replacing the gallows with some other method that "ensures instant death."
Godfrey Ssebuwufu, an activist with Uganda Citizen's Rescue, puckers his lips and contorts his face when asked about that decision. An ardent death penalty foe, Mr. Ssebuwufu says he opposes capital punishment on human rights grounds and will not speculate whether lethal injection or electrocution is more humane than the noose.
Mr. Ssebuwufu is a detective, right down to his long trench coat. He pores over court documents and sniffs around the city seeking clues that might spring some of those on death row. In one case he has been researching, the man sentenced to death for electrocuting his wife did not have electricity in his house at the time of the crime.
It was a similar investigation that dug up enough evidence to free Mr. Mpagi from jail. Now on the outside, he offers stomach-churning tales about life on death row to anybody who will listen.
He tells about how he was sometimes forced to wash the gallows. He tells about hearing the crank turning, lifting the prisoner up, and the awful, indescribable sound as the prisoner then came plummeting back down.
"It was 18 years and three months that I spent in there," Mr. Mpagi said. "There wasn't one day I didn't think I was going to die. Others should not go through what I went through - the guilty ones or the other innocent ones like me."
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
White House Assails Parts of Bills
House, Senate Remain Far Apart on Intelligence Legislation
By Charles Babington and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46344-2004Oct19.html
With House-Senate negotiators scheduled today to start resolving major differences in two bills to restructure the nation's intelligence community, the White House has criticized key portions of each plan and left some lawmakers wondering how they can meet a self-imposed deadline of finishing the work before the Nov. 2 election.
In a 10-page letter issued shortly before midnight Monday, the White House embraced the Senate's version of the two main provisions of both bills: establishing a new National Counterterrorism Center and appointing a national intelligence director to better coordinate intelligence work among government agencies. The administration letter sharply criticized the House bill for allowing "expedited deportations" of foreign suspects without judicial review, but it endorsed other House proposals to make it easier to detain or deport illegal immigrants. The White House opposed the Senate's call for a civil liberties board and the declassification of the amount of money spent on intelligence operations.
"It's hard to see how it gets resolved," a well-placed Senate aide said after conferring with colleagues reviewing the House and Senate differences on scores of items spread across hundreds of pages in the two bills.
Leaders of the negotiating conference committee diplomatically praised the White House letter yesterday while acknowledging the two chambers remain far apart.
The letter "overall is a hopeful sign in the midst of a reality that hasn't shown much progress," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). "The [conference] members have to step in now and break the ice. . . . If we let it wait until after the election . . . we lose the momentum."
Former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission that in July called for major revisions to the nation's intelligence structure and practices, said the letter "definitively states the White House position" and shows that President Bush "wants to move forward. It gives impetus to movement of the bill."
The letter, signed by Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, says the administration "supports the strong budget authority" given the national intelligence director in the Senate bill, which would give the new chief power to set spending at the CIA and in intelligence agencies elsewhere in the government. The House bill, crafted almost entirely by Republicans, would give the Pentagon a larger role in planning and executing the budgets for intelligence agencies, several of which are housed in the Defense Department.
A major element of the Senate bill, which withstood extensive criticism during debates, is the establishment of an independent oversight board that would be charged with safeguarding Americans' civil liberties and privacy concerns as a check on new governmental power to collect information on U.S. citizens at home and abroad. The White House said the provision is unnecessary because Bush has created a similar mechanism in the executive branch.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who heads the Senate conferees and chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee, said yesterday that creating an independent civil liberties board "is essential to maintaining bipartisan support for the bill." It was a key recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, she noted, and drew support from such diverse groups as the American Conservative Union and the American Civil Liberties Union. Saying she was surprised the White House opposed it, Collins suggested a compromise might be possible, given that the president had embraced a somewhat similar panel.
The White House also wants to drop a Senate provision that would bar the national intelligence director and his or her staff from being located at the CIA's Langley headquarters or any other facility that houses an intelligence agency. The idea is to keep the new leader of the intelligence community independent of any component agency. Some in the intelligence community considered the idea naive, saying it would force the new intelligence director to create his or her own administrative, security and transportation infrastructure when one already exists at the George Bush Center for Intelligence, named after the president's father.
Some of the biggest differences between the House and Senate bills involve immigration. Unlike the Senate, the House has proposed many ways to make it easier for federal agents to track, deport or indefinitely detain foreigners suspected of terrorist connections.
The White House "strongly opposes" a House provision that would empower agents to quickly deport illegal immigrants without a judge's review if they have been in the United States less than five years. Current law makes the cutoff two years. Immigrant groups, including key voting blocks of Hispanics in some states, had objected to the provision.
But the White House embraced other House provisions absent from the Senate bill. One would allow the secretary of homeland security to detain illegal immigrants indefinitely, eliminating their right of a habeas corpus review by a judge. Another provision would allow the government to immediately deport someone whose visa has been revoked.
The White House wants language, which neither bill contains, stressing that department heads such as the defense secretary remain in charge of their agencies, and that the president's Office of Management and Budget retain its budgetary authority. Described as a "preservation of authority and accountability" for the executive branch agencies, it is expected to be accepted by the conferees.
-------- immigration / refugees
White House rejects clauses on immigration
October 20, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041020-121529-3762r.htm
The White House is increasing pressure on Congress to strike from the final intelligence-reform legislation certain immigration-related provisions that House Republicans had tagged onto their version of the bill.
With a conference on the House and Senate versions of the legislation opening today, the Bush administration has written to Congress, expressing opposition to provisions that would broaden the government's ability to deport aliens and limit the rights of asylum-seekers.
The letter, dated Monday and signed by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten, expands on an Oct. 7 statement of administration policy by the president that first raised concerns about the provisions.
"These sections should be modified or dropped altogether," the administration says in Monday's letter, which was released by the Bush administration yesterday.
The letter expresses broad support for the bulk of the content in the House and Senate versions of the intelligence-reform bill, both of which call for the establishment of a national intelligence director (NID) and National Counterterrorism Center.
However, the administration said it is "gravely concerned about the excessive and unnecessary detail in the structure of the Office of the NID" included in both versions. The final bill, they said, "should not create additional layers of investigative offices and staffs."
The administration added that it opposes the establishment of an ombudsman to work within the NID offices, as well as "provisions that allow a subordinate officer to oversee or otherwise supervise the work of his superior."
The administration expressed satisfaction with one NID provision in the House version, which calls for keeping the intelligence community's overall budget secret - or effectively blocking "disclosure of sensitive information relating to [it]."
The letter was addressed to Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, who is chairman of the Senate-House conference to reconcile differences between the two versions of the reform.
Mrs. Collins, who co-wrote the Senate version with Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, said the letter was "further evidence that the president is eager to sign a bill that will implement a major reorganization of our intelligence system and make our nation safer."
The recommendations in the letter "will be considered carefully," she said.
Aside from the immigration and management structure issues, Mr. Bush urged Congress to agree on a final version quickly so he can sign it "into law as soon as possible," although it remains to be seen whether it will go through by Nov. 2.
The July final report of the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks laid the groundwork for the reforms, and with the election fast approaching, national security remains among the hottest campaign issues.
Critics say House Republicans have abused the opportunity to legitimately overhaul the nation's intelligence community by sneaking a series of controversial provisions into their reform package, particularly the sections dealing with immigration.
At issue are sections 3007 and 3008 of the House bill. Human Rights First, a New York-based advocacy group, says section 3007 would allow immigration enforcement officers to deport, without a hearing, any noncitizen who entered the United States illegally and has been in the country less than five years.
"This could result in the summary deportation of people who could face serious harm if deported, including battered spouses and children, victims of human trafficking and migrants from Cuba," the group says on its Web site.
Section 3008 expands the government's reasons for denying asylum. Citing refugees who often are forced to flee their countries under austere conditions - such as those from the Darfur region of Sudan, Human Rights First argues that the section "would allow an otherwise credible asylum-seeker to be denied asylum if he cannot provide corroborating documents that an adjudicator thinks he should be able to submit."
The administration "strongly opposes" section 3007 and "has concerns about" section 3008, according to the White House letter to Congress.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) yesterday said the letter signaled little more than a buckling by the president to political pressure.
"The Bush administration is clearly feeling the heat on these extraneous and dangerous provisions," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
"Although it continues to stubbornly endorse measures that would cut away at checks and balances for immigrants, expand the Patriot Act, add eight new death penalties and remove meaningful civil-liberties protections, the White House has signaled that it can still be swayed by political pressures," Miss Murphy said.
"It seems that the White House is reacting to growing pressure from crucial voter groups, like Cubans in Florida," she said. "The letter is evidence that the administration realizes that there are tremendous political risks if it ignores the protests of these key constituencies in this close presidential election. Appeasing potential voters should not be how we undergo the greatest restructuring of our nation's intelligence systems - a commitment to freedom and liberty should."
The Bush administration, meanwhile, welcomed Congress' efforts to prevent counterfeiting and tampering with driver's licenses and birth certificates, but said, "Additional consultation with the states is necessary to address important concerns about flexibility, privacy and unfunded mandates."
Brian DeBose contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
The Heroine Who Offered Hope for Iraq
Independent U.K.
By Robert Fisk
20 October 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102104J.shtml
Margaret? Margaret Hassan kidnapped? She who said to me that soon, very soon, "there will be more than one lost generation" in Iraq?
Is there no end to the kidnappers' targets? Margaret Hassan was abducted at 7.30 yesterday morning on her way to work running Care International's Iraq operation. Soon afterwards, Arabic al-Jazeera television showed her sitting in a room looking calm, if concerned. It also showed close-ups of her identification papers and said an unnamed Iraqi group claimed it had kidnapped her.
Margaret was the enemy of United Nations sanctions on Iraq. She is the symbol of all those who believe that Iraq - a real, free, unoccupied Iraq - has a future; and all we can be told is that she, too, has joined the legion of the unpersons, the "disappeared", the list of those who, because of their language or the colour of their eyes or their nationality, have slipped into Iraq's dark hole.
The ultimate disgrace yesterday was to hear British diplomats who supported those deadly sanctions weeping their crocodile tears for "Margaret".
Tony Blair rushed to say Britain will do all that it can to secure her release. "There is really a limit at this stage what I can say to you, but obviously we will do whatever we can," he said, while standing beside the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, in London.
"It shows the kind of people we are up against that they are prepared to kidnap somebody like this. We do not know which group it is."
But Mr Blair, remember, fully supported the sanctions which Margaret loathed. And, of course, he supported George Bush's invasion that led to the chaos that has engulfed Iraq.
Kidnappers have killed at least 35 foreign nationals in Iraq since the invasion. Iraqis seen as co-operating with the occupation forces or the US-backed Iraqi interim government have also been targeted for kidnapping. This week two Macedonian contractors who had been abducted were beheaded. And two weeks ago the same fate befell the British contractor Ken Bigley. And now Margaret has been taken. Margaret, who above all is a humanitarian.
I first met her when The Independent exposed the use by the Americans and British of depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf War, and the explosion of cancers and leukaemia that afflicted Iraqi children in the years that followed. Readers of The Independent donated £250,000 for medicines and Care - for which Margaret worked - undertook to distribute the vaccines around the hospitals of Iraq. Margaret and her Dublin colleague Judy Morgan found the trucks to take these vital medicines across Iraq to try to save the small creatures in the children's "wards of death".
I watched Margaret cajole the truck drivers, plead with the hospitals, bargain with the air-conditioning moguls to deliver vincristine and other fluids to the children's hospitals in the October heat.
For 30 years Margaret has devoted herself to Iraq. She started working for Care International soon after it began operations there in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War. She has a staff of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programmes the length and breadth of the country. She is married to an Iraqi and, though Irish-born, she carries British and Iraqi nationality.
She "considers herself an Iraqi national", Amber Meikle, Care International's spokeswoman, said yesterday. "We want to stress that she sees herself as an Iraqi. Iraq is her home. She has been living there for many years and would never consider coming back to Britain."
Margaret is a driven woman, as I recall so well. Every week, every day, every hour, the evidence of human tragedy on a massive scale - a UN sanctions disaster which they could do little or nothing to alleviate - mounted on their desks in the Care office in a fly-blown estate of Baghdad.
Yesterday, I went back to an old blue-covered notebook and an interview with Margaret. It is dated 5 October 1998. In the margin, I have written of her: "She doesn't shout when she speaks, but her indignation - uttered above her office's hissing air-conditioner - comes across as a cry, angry and frustrated, from someone who is tired of listening to platitudes."
These were black days, but the tragedy continues to unfold for her adopted nation. "This is a man-made disaster," she told me, banging her right hand into the palm of her left. "Yes, some people have benefited from what we have done. But we can't solve the problem of Iraq. It's got no economy. We can't replace this with aid."
Margaret pulled a thick file across her desk back in 1998. "What use can we be here?" she asked. "Now if this was a Third World country, we could bring in some water pumps at a cost of a few hundred pounds and they could save thousands of lives. But Iraq was not a Third World country before the [1991] war, and you can't run a developed society on aid. The doctors here are excellent - many were trained in Europe as well as Iraq - but because of sanctions, they haven't had access to a medical journal for eight years."
Margaret suspected that westerners had somehow divorced themselves from ordinary Iraqis during the 13 years of UN sanctions.
"I don't think we see them as people," she told me. "If you see someone suffering, if you have a grain of humanity in you, you have to respond to that. Sanctions are inhuman and what we are doing cannot redress that inhumanity.
"They are contrary to the UN charter which enshrines the rights of the individual. It's a contradiction, a hypocrisy. It's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."
There were times when even she was almost beaten. I remember one afternoon, after she had sent our medicines to the doomed cancer babies of Baghdad, when Margaret seemed defeated.
"The people here are really, really suffering," she said. "Do people know what it's like for a mother to wake up each morning not knowing how to feed her children? I don't think westerners see Iraqis as ordinary people."
Before the war to remove Saddam Hussein, Margaret was among the many who warned the British Government that an invasion and occupation would produce a humanitarian crisis in a country already severely weakened by the embargoes.
It is the ultimate irony that a woman who was brave and good and decent enough to oppose the shameful sanctions with which we chose to purge the Iraqi people should now be taken by kidnappers in Baghdad.
If ever there was a true friend of Iraqis, it is Margaret Hassan. Brave, outspoken, steadfast, she is a heroine. Her captors should be humbled that they can speak to so fine a lady.
--------
Spanish Say Foiled Plot Targeted Anti-Terror Headquarters
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45442-2004Oct19.html
PARIS, Oct. 19 -- Spanish authorities said Tuesday that they had disrupted a plot by a cell of Islamic radicals to blow up a Madrid court complex that is the headquarters of the country's top anti-terrorism investigators and judges.
Police arrested eight suspects in six cities on Monday and Tuesday in an effort to break up the cell, which was composed primarily of people with criminal records, according to statements released by the Spanish Interior Ministry.
Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said the suspects were planning an attack on the National Court building in Madrid and that "police are not ruling out other possible targets."
Authorities searched several locations across Spain but said they did not find any explosives or signs that an attack on the building was imminent. Investigators also said they found no evidence to suggest that the alleged plotters were connected to the commuter train bombings in Madrid in March that killed 191 people.
The Interior Ministry said the cell included four Algerians and one Moroccan. Some members of the group had been in touch recently with people in other European countries, as well as the United States and Australia, according to ministry officials, who did not elaborate.
The arrests appeared to be the result of a broad international investigation. Moroccan security officials received tips about the cell from an informant and passed the information to Spanish authorities, according to the Spanish daily El Mundo, which also reported that the suspects were planning to drive a truck filled with 1,000 pounds of explosives into the courthouse complex.
One of the cell's leaders was an Algerian man who has been imprisoned in Switzerland since September 2003 and is affiliated with the Armed Islamic Group, a radical organization that has been fighting the Algerian government for a decade, the news agency Europa Press reported.
The National Court building includes offices of judicial magistrates who oversee anti-terrorism investigations in Spain, including the probe into the train bombings and a separate long-running examination into al Qaeda networks in Spain.
Spanish investigators have been unable to determine who ordered the Madrid bombings but have detained 20 suspects -- most of them Moroccan immigrants -- accused of being affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda. Seven other suspects killed themselves in an explosion in April after police surrounded an apartment building where they were hiding.
Also on Tuesday, a Spanish television station broadcast for the first time a security-camera videotape of the train bombings, the Associated Press reported from Madrid.
The video, aired by Telecinco, begins after one bomb has already exploded, with dazed commuters on a smoke-shrouded platform at the Atocha station. The time on the tape says 7:38 a.m. Then smoke flows toward the camera and people are knocked over -- apparently by another blast. Seconds later, flames erupt from a stopped train, filling the screen.
Four minutes after that, bodies are seen scattered on the platform amid puddles of blood as emergency personnel attend to them.
--------
Britain Charges Cleric Sought by U.S. for Aiding Terrorism
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46227-2004Oct19.html
LONDON, Oct. 19 -- A radical Muslim cleric who is wanted on terrorism charges in the United States was accused by British prosecutors Tuesday of encouraging others to murder non-believers, including Jews, and inciting racial hatred.
The move could add years to U.S. efforts to extradite the cleric, Abu Hamza Masri.
Abu Hamza Masri has praised the Sept. 11 hijackers in public.
Masri, 47, whose north London mosque became a meeting place and recruitment center for Islamic militants who went on to plan attacks against Western targets, was charged with 10 counts of soliciting murder, five counts of "using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior with the intention of stirring up racial hatred," and one count of possessing a terrorist document. If convicted, he could receive a life sentence.
The Egyptian-born preacher, who lost an eye and both hands in fighting in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, was arraigned at Belmarsh prison, a high-security center where he has been held since May on a U.S. extradition request. Since British law takes precedence, the charges could result in a potentially lengthy trial here before Masri faces charges in the United States.
A federal grand jury in New York indicted Masri in April on charges of seeking to establish a military training camp for Muslim fighters in rural Oregon and aiding the kidnapping of 16 Western tourists, including 12 Britons and two Americans, in Yemen in 1998. Masri has denied the charges.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced those charges at a news conference in New York in May. Masri is "the real deal," Raymond Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, said at the news conference. "Think of him as a freelance consultant to terrorist groups worldwide."
The British decision to charge Masri makes it less likely that he will be interrogated for intelligence purposes, U.S. officials said. Had he not been charged in Britain, the United States could have tried to negotiate a plea deal and extradition agreement with Masri's attorneys that might have required his cooperation.
But British and U.S. authorities have no legal right to question Masri now, and plea bargaining does not exist under the British legal system. U.S. authorities would likely not be able to ask British courts to extradite Masri to face charges in the United States before the adjudication of his case in Britain, and they may have to wait until he has served his sentence, U.S. officials said.
Masri was arrested in a pre-dawn raid in May. During the search of his home, a knowledgeable person said, police discovered video and audio tapes of sermons, speeches and other materials that led directly to Tuesday's charges. Officials would not comment on the charges, citing Britain' s strict laws against pretrial publicity.
A former nightclub bouncer who has lived in Britain for 25 years, Masri has been one of the most visible and high-profile supporters in London of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. On the first two anniversaries of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, he held public meetings praising the actions of the hijackers and blaming Jews and the Bush administration for inciting Muslim outrage.
British authorities long suspected him of a role in recruiting radicals such as Richard C. Reid, a British citizen convicted of trying to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was charged in the United States with aiding the Sept. 11 plot. But until recently they were unable or unwilling to mount a prosecution of Masri, who obtained citizenship here in 1981 after marrying a British woman whom he has since divorced.
But last year, Home Secretary David Blunkett, the cabinet minister in charge of domestic security, declared Masri a national security threat and moved to strip him of his citizenship. Officials also turned over control of his Finsbury Park mosque to moderates opposed to his teachings. He has appealed both moves and for nearly a year before his arrest resorted to preaching on the street outside the mosque.
Hugo Keith, a British lawyer representing the U.S. government in the case, asked the court at Tuesday's arraignment to adjourn the extradition request until the domestic charges were adjudicated. Masri did not comment or enter a plea at the hearing. In the past, he and his supporters have said he was only exercising his right to free speech and had no involvement in terrorist activities. Some civil liberties advocates here have said he is being singled out unfairly by the government because of his outspoken views.
Staff writer Susan Schmidt in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Britain Charges Muslim Cleric Sought by U.S.
October 20, 2004
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/international/europe/20hamza.html
LONDON, Oct. 19 - Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical Muslim cleric who faces extradition to the United States, was charged by the British police on Tuesday with encouraging followers to murder Jews and other non-Muslims.
Appearing before a magistrates' court at Belmarsh Prison here, Mr. Masri was charged with 16 offenses in all. The other charges included inciting racial hatred, possessing threatening or incendiary sound and video recordings and having a terrorist document in his possession on the day he was arrested.
The charge states that the document "contained information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."
Mr. Masri, who arrived in Britain in 1979, has been in a high security jail in Britain since May, when he was arrested by the British antiterrorism police on a United States extradition warrant. He faces 11 charges in the United States, including hostage taking and providing material support to Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.
The British police began pursuing their own charges against Mr. Masri during the summer. Now the British case, one of the highest-profile terrorism cases here, takes precedence, and the American extradition request will be put on hold until after Mr. Masri's trial in Britain. One potential problem with the extradition is that British law bars extradition where the death penalty could be imposed.
The former imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, Mr. Masri, 46, is considered a radical preacher and was known for delivering fiery speeches to his followers. Last year, the Egyptian-born cleric was stripped of his British citizenship and barred from preaching at the mosque. But he continued to preach on the road just outside the mosque.
Both Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of being the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, reportedly attended that mosque before their arrests. Mr. Reid is in prison in the United States, and Mr. Moussaoui faces trial there. Antiterrorism officials have described the mosque as a focus of terrorist planning.
Mr. Masri, who lost an eye and a hand while fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980's, appeared in court surrounded by several police officers.
He is one of several prominent Muslim clerics who have been accused of supporting terrorism, including Abu Qatada, who is said to have been the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, the man who led the Sept. 11 plot. Mr. Qatada remains in prison here without charges.
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
Poor nations found to be most corrupt
Aljazeera
20 October 2004
By Roshan Muhammed Salih
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DBFAB979-5B46-44AC-AA34-A4D948A8219F.htm
Bangladesh and Haiti have been ranked the most corrupt countries in the world.
A new survey by Transparency International (TI), an anti-graft organisation, also rates Nigeria, Chad, Myanmar, Azerbaijan and Paraguay among the world's most corrupt nations.
Finland is ranked the least corrupt country in the world.
Other nations with very low levels of corruption are New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, TI says.
The study, which reflects the perceptions of business people and country analysts, draws on surveys conducted by independent institutions between 2002 and 2004.
Robin Hodess, director of policy and research at TI, told Aljazeera.net there was a direct correlation between poverty and corruption.
Political instability
She said the more corrupt countries in the world - which are dominated by developing nations - are also characterised by political instability.
"Cleaner countries have stronger institutions and are more open," she said.
"Cleaner countries have stronger institutions and are more open. There is more wealth and more freedom in these societies. And there also seems to be a direct connection between media freedom and less corruption"
Robin Hodess, Transparency International "There is more wealth and more freedom in these societies. And there also seems to be a direct connection between media freedom and less corruption."
Moreover, TI estimates the amount lost due to bribery in government acquisitions is at least $400 billion a year worldwide.
Its study says developing countries with large oil sectors are particularly prone to corruption.
"Corruption in large-scale public projects is a daunting obstacle to sustainable development, and results in a major loss of public funds needed for education, healthcare and poverty alleviation, both in developed and developing countries," said TI chairman Peter Eigen.
Oil corruption
"Oil-rich Angola, Azerbaijan, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen all have extremely low scores.
"In these countries, public contracting in the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials."
TI says Iraq's future depends on the transparency of the oil sector
TI said Western governments should oblige their oil companies to publish what they pay in fees and royalties, as well as other payments to host governments and state oil companies.
Eigen added the future of Iraq depended on transparency in the oil sector.
"The urgent need to fund post-war construction heightens the importance of stringent transparency requirements in all procurement contracts," he said.
"Without strict anti-bribery measures, the reconstruction of Iraq will be wrecked by a wasteful diversion of resources to corrupt elites."
Globalisation
However, non-governmental organisations say the world's richer nations are partly responsible for the plight of the world's poor because of colonialism, conquest and the effects of free trade policies and globalisation.
They also contend the developed world's insatiable thirst for oil is fuelling political instability in poorer nations.
Last year, UK-based Christian Aid released a report saying the presence of oil in a developing country makes life worse, not better, for the people who live there.
The report said oil was the key ingredient in "a lethal cocktail of greater poverty for the vast majority of the population, increased corruption, a greater likelihood of war or civil strife, and dictatorial or unrepresentative government".
-------- propaganda wars
Ads Push the Factual Envelope
Misleading Claims Have Candidates Battling Caricatures
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46224-2004Oct19?language=printer
As the presidential campaign careens toward the finish line, John F. Kerry is denouncing deep Social Security cutbacks that President Bush has not proposed. And Bush is slamming "government-run" health care that Kerry has refused to embrace.
Kerry says the president could bring back a military draft, despite Bush's vociferous denials. Bush suggests Kerry regards terrorism as a "nuisance" when the senator merely said his goal is to reduce it to that level.
In their stump speeches and attack ads, the candidates have moved beyond assailing -- critics would say distorting -- their opponents' positions and are setting up straw men that they enthusiastically knock down. They are, some analysts say, campaigning against caricatures.
"In the specifics, you can get away with just about anything," said Shanto Iyengar, chairman of Stanford University's communications department. "Ninety-five percent of the American public knows very little about the details. The only people who care about it are journalists and pundits. In the real world, people don't have time."
Exaggerations are as old as television advertising itself. The particularly bitter tone of the candidates' ads in 2004 -- amplified by even tougher language by some independent "527" groups -- has been building for months.
From March through August, Bush tried to bury Kerry under a blizzard of attack ads, some of them based on misleading charges, while the Massachusetts senator aired mainly positive ads. Even after turning negative in September, Kerry has pushed the factual envelope less often than the president -- until recently.
Beginning in 1992, a few news organizations began running fact-checking articles on presidential ads, which for a time provided a modest check on questionable claims. That fall, for example, journalists touched off a front-page controversy when they said President George H.W. Bush was relying on disputed assumptions with an ad charging that Bill Clinton would raise taxes on some middle-class individuals by more than $2,000 a year.
But these efforts have been overshadowed by a dramatic increase in presidential ad spending, along with bolder advertising claims in an increasingly raucous political culture. Television networks often replay these attack ads with only periodic attempts at verifying them.
"The standards in this political season for accuracy are lower than they have ever been, and the penalty for fabrication is lower than it's ever been," said Democratic media consultant Mandy Grunwald. But she said news accounts that portray both sides as equally culpable miss the mark. "I think the Bush folks in government and the campaign make stuff up more than anyone I've ever seen and have largely paid no penalty for it," she said, in part because "the volume of their advertising is so much greater than the volume of journalism."
Republican media consultant Don Sipple questioned whether the closing barrage will move the meter for either candidate.
"They're stuck in this 30-second attack culture, and I think it's a wash," he said, because voters "tend to discount new fear-mongering this late in a campaign." As for Kerry's charges against Bush, Sipple said: "To some extent, he's gotten an easier ride because of the predisposition of the press to want a horse race."
A Kerry ad, based on a private comment Bush is reported to have made on wanting to privatize Social Security, says: "Now Bush has a plan that cuts Social Security benefits by 30 to 45 percent." But the president, while favoring allowing younger workers to put part of their benefits in private accounts, has never put forth a plan -- and has vowed that any change would not affect current retirees.
The Social Security ad is one of a number that Kerry's campaign has released to generate news coverage but has not purchased time to broadcast.
Kerry said last week that there is a "great potential" that Bush will reinstate the draft. The president has repeatedly denied this, and Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt, in a common campaign refrain, said the charge shows Kerry "will do or say anything to get elected."
Bush insists on referring to Kerry's health care plan as "government-run," despite the fact that it relies on the current system of private health insurance. And when a Bush ad says the Kerry proposal would bring "rationing, less access, fewer choices, long waits," it is referring to the existing Medicaid program, which under the Kerry plan would offer coverage to some who now lack insurance.
One Bush ad says Kerry "voted for education reform and now opposes it." But Kerry voted for the No Child Left Behind Act and wants to improve it and boost what he says is the president's inadequate funding of the law.
When Kerry told the New York Times that he wanted to reduce terrorism to a nuisance like gambling and prostitution, another Bush ad cited his remark, adding: "Terrorism -- a nuisance? How can Kerry protect us when he doesn't understand the threat?" But the senator never said terrorism is a nuisance now.
The selection of these closing themes is no accident. In the final weeks of the 2000 campaign, candidate Bush charged in a commercial: "Al Gore's prescription plan forces seniors into a government-run HMO." A Republican National Committee ad said: "Why does Al Gore say one thing when the truth is another? . . . Nonpartisan analysis confirms George Bush's plan sets aside $2.4 trillion to strengthen Social Security." Bush often declared that Gore would "say anything" to get elected.
The then-vice president, for his part, aired a final-week ad in which an expert said Bush's proposal "simply doesn't add up and would undermine Social Security." Sipple dismissed Kerry's 2004 version, saying: "The Social Security fear card has been played so many times in so many election cycles that it's been somewhat discounted."
The president's assault on Kerry as weak on defense also has a familiar ring. Bush's father, running for reelection in 1992, ran an ad criticizing Bill Clinton on the Persian Gulf War and for avoiding the draft. Another ad used footage of the Gulf War and an attempted Soviet coup, saying: "In a world where we're just one unknown dictator away from the next major crisis, who do you most trust to be sitting in this chair? President Bush, commander in chief."
The most effective advertising plays to people's preconceptions about the parties, Stanford's Iyengar said.
"Each side tries to come up with a message that fits the stereotype," he said.
--------
Anti-Kerry Film Won't Be Aired
Democrats, Investors Push TV Conglomerate to Alter Broadcast Plans
By Frank Ahrens and Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46338-2004Oct19.html
Under mounting political, legal and financial pressure, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. yesterday backed away from its plan to carry a film attacking John F. Kerry's Vietnam War record, saying it would air only portions of the movie in an hour-long special scheduled for Friday.
"The experience of preparing to air this news special has been trying for many of those involved," Sinclair chief executive David D. Smith said in a statement. "The company and many of its executives have endured personal attacks of the vilest nature, as well as calls on our advertisers and our viewers to boycott our stations and on our shareholders to sell their stock."
Chad Clanton, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, which had demanded equal time to respond to the planned airing of the 42-minute film "Stolen Honor," said Sinclair "has been all over the map on this issue. One thing that's certain is that they have a partisan agenda."
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the nonprofit Media Access Project, called the Sinclair move "a surprising cave-in" and said the 62-station television company "clearly felt a lot of pressure and this is an attempt to find a face-saving way out."
Democrats have complained to three federal agencies about the Sinclair special, noting that Smith and his three brothers, who run the Baltimore area company, have contributed heavily to President Bush and the Republican Party.
Sinclair said it will produce "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media," hosted by Jeff Barnd, an anchor at Sinclair's WBFF in Baltimore, using footage from "Stolen Honor" and other political documentaries while examining allegations of media bias. The company now says that it never intended to air "Stolen Honor" in its entirety, although Sinclair commentator and vice president Mark Hyman had told The Washington Post that the movie would air unless the Massachusetts senator agreed to an interview, in which case only portions might run.
"I am not personally aware that he ever said that, but if he said it, that was not company policy at the time," Sinclair lawyer Barry Faber said. He said Sinclair's position on the film has been "evolving" and that journalists and critics have made a "leap to judgment."
"There has been a misunderstanding of what our intention was," Faber said, "in part because it wasn't clear to us what our intention was."
The film features 17 former prisoners of war criticizing Kerry's 1971 allegations of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam. Asked whether the political uproar prompted Sinclair to change its plans, Faber said: "We did not and do not make programming decisions because of political pressure." Sinclair also generated headlines after firing its Washington bureau chief, Jon Leiberman, on Monday, for criticizing plans to air the movie.
Sinclair's stock has dropped more than 15 percent since the controversy erupted 10 days ago. Alan G. Hevesi, the Democratic comptroller of New York whose state pension fund holds 257,000 shares of Sinclair, questioned in a letter to the company yesterday whether airing the movie would further depress the shares.
The Sinclair announcement came hours after Deborah Rappaport, a major Democratic donor with her husband, Andy, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said they had offered to buy one hour on Sinclair stations. This would finance a 42-minute version of a pro-Kerry documentary, "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," by George Butler. Rappaport said she was "deeply, deeply outraged" by Sinclair's action and was offering $1 million more than the company's usual ad rate in response.
Adding to the pressure on Sinclair, a group of institutional investors alleged yesterday that Smith's three brothers, who serve on the company board, sold millions of dollars in Sinclair shares late last year just before the stock began its decline. Prominent shareholder lawyer William S. Lerach said the family would face a lawsuit unless the company is repaid.
Lerach, who has led investor lawsuits against Enron Corp., Time Warner Inc. and other corporations, is a noted Democratic fundraiser. But he said his involvement is not political, spurred instead by institutional investors who have watched Sinclair's stock slide from a high of $15 per share in late December to its close of $6.26 yesterday.
Lerach noted that Frederick, Robert and Duncan Smith sold about 1.4 million shares of stock for almost $19 million as the stock was peaking at the turn of the year. The attorney, whose clients include a New York pension fund for health care workers, said the plan to air "Stolen Honor" has further hurt the company by driving down the stock price. He said Sinclair executives "should be focusing on creating shareholder value -- not pressing a controversial personal political agenda at shareholders' expense."
Also yesterday, James E. Beardsley Jr., attorney for a Vietnam War veteran who is seen in a war protest in "Stolen Honor," said he would sue Sinclair if it airs the movie. The veteran, Kenneth J. Campbell, now a University of Delaware professor, sued filmmaker Carlton Sherwood for libel this week. The movie "made him look like a liar, a fraud and a fabricator" by suggesting he made baseless charges about a Vietnam massacre, Beardsley said.
Sherwood called the suit "an obvious public relations stunt," noting in a statement that Campbell is not named in the film. After a Philadelphia theater canceled plans to show "Stolen Honor," Sherwood accused Kerry supporters of trying to "silence and censor the voices of veteran POWs."
-------- us politics
Pentagon to Place U.S. Ballot on Internet for Overseas Voters
The New York Times
By MICHAEL MOSS
October 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/politics/campaign/20cnd-military.html?ex=1099316690&ei=1&en=6a84f73ea63fd2a2
Bowing to pressure from both the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Pentagon has decided to post a federal write-in ballot on its Web site for civilian and military voters to use overseas if their regular ballots fail to arrive in time.
Political wrangling and late primaries caused local election offices in at least eight swing states to miss the deadline of Sept. 19 for sending out ballots to ensure their timely return from far-flung locales where mail service is slow. Partisan groups vying to get out the overseas vote had begun posting the substitute write-in ballot, which covers federal but not local races or measures, on their Internet sites out of concern that its distribution to consulates has made it too hard to get.
"This is being done at the request of both political parties to extend every opportunity to those overseas, both civilian and military," said Lt. Col. Joseph Richard, a spokesman for the Pentagon, which runs the federal government's voting assistance program.
A series of missteps by program officials, along with lingering concern about the overseas voting problems that surfaced in 2000, is prompting election officials, political operatives and various groups representing Americans abroad to take further steps to shore up the fractured voting system for the estimated 4.4 million eligible voters overseas.
Last week, Colorado joined four other swing states - Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Washington - in accepting ballots from overseas that arrive after Election Day. The cutoff dates vary with each state, ranging to Nov. 17, and could delay the reporting of results in the presidential race. Colorado officials cited the legal fight over placing Ralph Nader on the ballot for the delay in distributing ballots.
Mr. Nader's on-and-off again status in Pennsylvania has prompted the Department of Justice to sue state officials to force a ballot deadline extension there two weeks beyond Election Day. Some local election offices included Mr. Nader on the ballots they mailed overseas, while others did not. State officials are fighting the Justice Department's move, saying they can help voters meet the Nov. 2 deadline through courier services or by accepting ballots that are faxed.
Twenty-three states have allowed voting by fax to avoid mail delays overseas, but there remain some potential snags with this method as well. Election officials in California said this week that they were searching for legal authority that would let them accept faxed ballots that are not accompanied by a secrecy waiver, which is required of voters who use this system.
Tony Miller, special counsel for the California secretary of state, said voters who did not receive their regular ballot would not get the accompanying waiver form. Voters can write out their own such waiver, he said, but the state is concerned that not all voters will know to do this.
The secrecy waiver has come under attack in California, where three overseas voters have sued the state saying the requirement is intimidating and could discourage voting. The State Supreme Court has ordered a judge to review the challenge, but declined to take any further action before the Nov. 2 election.
Meanwhile, two Democratic members of Congress this week asked its investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, to examine the Pentagon's handling of the voter assistance program. The request, from Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Carolyn B. Maloney of New York cites several issues that have surfaced recently in news reports.
Among their concerns, they said, is the Pentagon's use of a private contractor in establishing an e-mail and fax balloting system, and the recent launching of an Internet ballot-retrieval system that is not open to most civilians abroad.
Pentagon officials said that this retrieval system - available through the Web site, myballot.mil - could include only the military because they were using a Pentagon database to verify voter identities. But Mr. Richard, the Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged recently that some civilians working for military contractors could use the system because they are included in the verification database.
Mr. Richard said the Pentagon could not determine how many civilian contractors would be able to use the system. Ten states have agreed to make their ballots accessible through myballot.mil, while 23 have declined to participate citing security and other concerns.
-------- voting
Soros-supported voter-registration drive probed
October 20, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041020-121530-1018r.htm
Billionaire currency trader George Soros, in his quest to unseat President Bush, has given millions of dollars to a coalition of anti-Bush organizations whose nationwide voter-registration drive has been targeted by state and federal authorities for possible widespread fraud.
Working under an umbrella organization known as America Votes, the coalition's registration drive - described by election officials as the largest in U.S. history - focused on potential voters in 14 so-called battleground states.
America Votes, which represents a collection of labor unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups and community organizations representing 20 million Americans, describes itself as a "nonpartisan political organization" that seeks to use the strategic abilities and large membership base of its coalition members to "break new ground in electoral politics."
Its goal is to "register, educate and mobilize" voters for this year's elections, but some of those efforts are now being challenged.
Hundreds of questionable voter-registration applications, such as duplicates, and accusations of workers shredding registrations in favor of one party are under review by local, state and federal law-enforcement and election authorities in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, West Virginia, Oregon, Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida.
The coalition spent more than $100 million on its voter-registration campaign, according to financial records and several people familiar with the member organizations. Despite its nonpartisan claim, its membership includes 32 groups committed to Mr. Bush's defeat.
Cecile Richards, a veteran labor and political organizer, is the coalition's president. Before coming to America Votes, she served as deputy chief of staff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.
"The launch of America Votes is a groundbreaking endeavor in American politics," she said. "We look forward to working together to reach out to voters and to talk about the issues that are important to Americans. America Votes is going to make an historic impact on the political process in this country."
As a key contributor to the coalition, Mr. Soros, whose estimated net worth is $7 billion, is on a one-month speaking tour in several battleground states, where he has taken Mr. Bush to task for what he called "missteps" in the war in Iraq.
Mr. Soros has described the Nov. 2 elections and the defeat of Mr. Bush as "the central focus of my life." To that end, he has routed millions of dollars to coalition members, key among which are MoveOn.org, an anti-Bush Internet-based advocacy group, and America Coming Together (ACT), which is dedicated to get-out-the-vote activities for Democratic candidates, particularly this year.
Coalition members are using thousands of paid workers and volunteers, armed with bar-coded identification sheets, to target undecided and potential Democratic voters door to door, and at shopping centers, grocery stores, street festivals, sporting events, naturalization ceremonies and hip-hop concerts from coast to coast.
The America Votes registration drive has been the beneficiary of millions of Soros dollars, and records show two coalition members, MoveOn.org and ACT, have accounted for nearly $15 million alone in cash contributions from Mr. Soros and his business partner, Peter Lewis.
Both MoveOn.org and ACT are 527 tax-exempt organizations, allowed to take part in political campaigns and register voters.
MoveOn.org, which claims 2.3 million members, received significant financial help from Mr. Soros and Mr. Lewis, who pledged a $5 million matching grant last November - a dollar for every two raised by MoveOn.org members - to put together a $15 million war chest to defeat Mr. Bush.
The organization was begun in 1998 by Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who organized an Internet-based advocacy group to protest the "waste of tax dollars" in the impeachment of President Clinton, calling for the country to "move on to more pressing issues facing the nation."
Later, MoveOn.org vigorously opposed U.S. intervention in Iraq, a position that drew the attention of Mr. Soros.
MoveOn.org ran an ad largely funded by anti-war Democrats that accused Mr. Bush of lying to get the United States into war with Iraq and blaming him for 1,000 American deaths there as well as a $150 billion price tag.
The ad included an image of a U.S. soldier sinking in desert sand as he tried to keep his rifle above his head.
In 2002, Mr. Boyd and Mrs. Blades hired a computer programmer, Zack Exley, as MoveOn.org's organizing director. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Exley had programmed GWBush.com, a Web page that featured doctored photographs portraying Mr. Bush as a drug addict.
ACT was founded in August 2003 when Mr. Soros announced he was giving $10 million to the organization to ensure that Mr. Bush was not re-elected. At the time, he called ACT "an effective way to mobilize civil society, to convince people to go to the polls and vote for candidates who will reassert the values of the greatest open society in the world."
The District-based organization has since raised more than $50 million to defeat Mr. Bush, and has been active in the America Votes registration campaign. It hired a staff of about 1,500 canvassers, paying them $12 an hour to go door to door in battleground states to register voters.
ACT is headed by Ellen R. Malcolm, who also organized Emily's List, a pro-choice political action network, and Steve Rosenthal, who served as deputy political adviser to the Democratic National Committee, chief adviser to Labor Secretary Robert Reich during the Clinton administration and political director at the AFL-CIO.
Mrs. Malcolm told The Washington Post that the Soros donation was "like getting his Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
Mr. Rosenthal also is executive director of Partnership for America's Families (PAF), a political action committee financed with $20 million from labor unions and as much as $10 million from individual, pro-Democratic donors. PAF also is a member of the America Votes coalition.
The battleground states - Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin - can deliver 145 Electoral College votes, with 270 needed to win.
--------
Ohio aids probe of bogus voter registry forms
October 20, 2004
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041019-103123-7206r.htm
The Ohio Attorney General's Office has joined the investigation of a man charged with filing more than 100 fictitious voter registration forms who was paid in crack by a woman affiliated with the NAACP National Voter Fund.
Defiance County Sheriff Dave Westrick said yesterday he requested the state's assistance, given that some names in the probe involve individuals and organizations in "other counties" of Ohio.
Kim Norris, spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, confirmed that her office is helping in the investigation.
"Agents from our Bureau of Identification and Investigation are working on this case at the request of the Defiance County Sheriff's Office. It's Defiance County's investigation. We're providing investigative services for Sheriff Westrick," Ms. Norris said.
On Monday, the sheriff's office arrested and charged Chad Staton, 22, of Defiance, with false registration, a fifth-degree felony. He was released on his own recognizance and has a hearing set for Friday.
The sheriff's office said Mr. Staton was hired by a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, who, they said, admitted paying Mr. Staton in crack cocaine. Miss Pitts said she was recruited by Thaddeus J. Jackson II of Cleveland.
Mr. Jackson was identified on a business card that Miss Pitts provided police as assistant Ohio director of the NAACP NFV.
Capt. Mike Murphy, spokesman for the Toledo Police, said authorities were attempting to locate Miss Pitts yesterday.
In an interview with the Toledo Blade, Mr. Jackson said Miss Pitts was a volunteer with the NVF. He said he knew of no fraud involving any of the registration forms she submitted.
George Forbes, head of the NAACP's Cleveland branch and a former Cleveland city councilman, said yesterday: "I know Thaddeus Jackson. But there is no connection between the Cleveland NAACP and Thaddeus Jackson's [NVF] operation."
The NAACP NVF and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are two separate organizations.
In a statement yesterday, Greg Moore, executive director of the District-based NVF, expressed "shock" at the arrest.
"This matter deserves the attention of law enforcement. If laws have been violated, then legal action should be taken against the people who are responsible," Mr. Moore said.
He added: "The NAACP NVF has detailed guidelines, outlining procedures that should be followed by its volunteers. ... [A]ny person who works on behalf of NVF is required to abide by those guidelines and to all applicable federal and state laws."
Laura Howell, deputy director for the Defiance County Board of Elections, said one of the 130 registration forms traced to Mr. Staton bore his name. Others, she said, had names such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Michael Jordan and Janet Jackson.
"We noticed a similarity in handwriting on the forms, and only a very few turned out to be legitimate registrations," she said.
--------
Pentagon to Place U.S. Ballot on Internet for Overseas Voters
October 20, 2004
By MICHAEL MOSS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/politics/campaign/20cnd-military.html?hp&ex=1098331200&en=b11eeb843d452083&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Bowing to pressure from both the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Pentagon has decided to post a federal write-in ballot on its Web site for civilian and military voters to use overseas if their regular ballots fail to arrive in time.
Political wrangling and late primaries caused local election offices in at least eight swing states to miss the deadline of Sept. 19 for sending out ballots to ensure their timely return from far-flung locales where mail service is slow.
Partisan groups vying to get out the overseas vote had begun posting the substitute write-in ballot, which covers federal but not local races or measures, on their Internet sites out of concern that its distribution to consulates has made it too hard to get.
"This is being done at the request of both political parties to extend every opportunity to those overseas, both civilian and military," said Lt. Col. Joseph Richard, a spokesman for the Pentagon, which runs the federal government's voting assistance program.
A series of missteps by program officials, along with lingering concern about the overseas voting problems that surfaced in 2000, is prompting election officials, political operatives and various groups representing Americans abroad to take further steps to shore up the fractured voting system for the estimated 4.4 million eligible voters overseas.
Last week, Colorado joined four other swing states - Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Washington - in accepting ballots from overseas that arrive after Election Day. The cutoff dates vary with each state, ranging to Nov. 17, and could delay the reporting of results in the presidential race. Colorado officials cited the legal fight over placing Ralph Nader on the ballot for the delay in distributing ballots.
Mr. Nader's on-and-off again status in Pennsylvania has prompted the Department of Justice to sue state officials to force a ballot deadline extension there two weeks beyond Election Day. Some local election offices included Mr. Nader on the ballots they mailed overseas, while others did not. State officials are fighting the Justice Department's move, saying they can help voters meet the Nov. 2 deadline through courier services or by accepting ballots that are faxed.
Twenty-three states have allowed voting by fax to avoid mail delays overseas, but there remain some potential snags with this method as well. Election officials in California said this week that they were searching for legal authority that would let them accept faxed ballots that are not accompanied by a secrecy waiver, which is required of voters who use this system.
Tony Miller, special counsel for the California secretary of state, said voters who did not receive their regular ballot would not get the accompanying waiver form. Voters can write out their own such waiver, he said, but the state is concerned that not all voters will know to do this.
The secrecy waiver has come under attack in California, where three overseas voters have sued the state saying the requirement is intimidating and could discourage voting. The State Supreme Court has ordered a judge to review the challenge, but declined to take any further action before the Nov. 2 election.
Meanwhile, two Democratic members of Congress this week asked its investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, to examine the Pentagon's handling of the voter assistance program. The request, from Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Carolyn B. Maloney of New York cites several issues that have surfaced recently in news reports.
Among their concerns, they said, is the Pentagon's use of a private contractor in establishing an e-mail and fax balloting system, and the recent launching of an Internet ballot-retrieval system that is not open to most civilians abroad.
Pentagon officials said that this retrieval system - available through the Web site, myballot.mil - could include only the military because they were using a Pentagon database to verify voter identities. But Mr. Richard, the Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged recently that some civilians working for military contractors could use the system because they are included in the verification database.
Mr. Richard said the Pentagon could not determine how many civilian contractors would be able to use the system. Ten states have agreed to make their ballots accessible through myballot.mil, while 23 have declined to participate citing security and other concerns.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Greenhouse gases are the most imminently threatening weapons of mass destruction
innovations-report.com
20.10.2004
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/environment_sciences/report-35059.html
Global warming poses an increasingly sizeable threat to the continued existence of man. James Lovelock, atmospheric chemist and author of Gaia warns that the gravity of the situation facing Earth's inhabitants is greater than we have yet realized and accepted. Lovelock sets forth his predictions -- and proposed solutions -- in a commentary piece published this week in Atmospheric Science Letters.
The laws of Gaia - a hypothesis set forth by Lovelock - imply that any species that makes changes in the composition of the air and the nature of the land surface risks altering the world to a state that will disfavour its progeny. In other words, if humans continue in their current path of alteration of the environment, they will become a target of elimination from the world.
In his commentary, Lovelock outlines the two major approaches to the threat of global warming. One approach, adopted by some, is to deny the existence of global warming and enjoy more temperate climates while they last. Others recognize the threat but choose to react in the Green way, eating organic foods, using renewable energy sources and alternative medicines. Lovelock argues that taking either of these approaches will ultimately result in the elimination of humans as well as civilization.
Instead, he believes that in order to come to terms with Gaia and its implications for the future of humans, we must embrace technology and use it to lessen our impact on the atmosphere of the Earth. Amongst his recommendations are: development of a portfolio of energy sources, including nuclear; adopting a practice of synthesizing food products, thereby allowing the Earth a chance to rest; and a reduced focus on the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals and radiation.
Finally, Lovelock points out that failure to concentrate efforts on the very real danger of global warming will result in a far more imminent threat of extinction than cancer, as demonstrated by the 20,000 Europeans who died during overheating in 2003. He concludes: "My hope lies in the powerful force that takes over our lives when our tribe or nation is threatened from outside...perhaps when the catastrophes of the intensifying greenhouse become frequent enough, we will pull together as a global unit with the self- restraint to stop burning fossil fuel and abusing the natural world."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Peace Profiteers
Hip-hop is showing encouraging signs of a Vietnam-esque antiwar movement.
October 20, 2004
eastbayexpress.com
BY ERIC K. ARNOLD eric.arnold@eastbayexpress.com
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2004-10-20/music/close2thaedge.html
As Megadeth once put it, "Peace sells, but who's buying?" In 2004, everyone, apparently. From a pop culture perspective, the long-held conventional wisdom -- war succeeds on the strength of its profitability alone, while peace fails precisely because it is inherently unprofitable -- has taken a huge hit thanks to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which pulled in more than $100 million and definitely proved that politically charged antiwar efforts are commercially marketable.
This shift has invaded popular music as well. Following 9/11 and the deployment of US troops in Afghanistan, songs like Toby Keith's "Shockin' Y'All" flooded the airwaves with pro-Bush propaganda, while dissenters like the Dixie Chicks were reviled as pinko lefty traitoresses. But with the death toll in Iraq reportedly topping 12,000 -- including more than 1,000 US soldiers -- pro-war jingles have all but become extinct, unless you count "Tie a Yellow Ribbon."
Instead, punk and indie rockers, folk musicians, and rappers alike have gravitated toward antiwar musical statements. Hip-hop's basic alignment with freedom of speech and tendency toward social commentary has only intensified in this election year -- even mainstream rap artists haven't shied away from discussing current events. New York MC Jadakiss' surprisingly political hit "Why" (Why they let the Terminator win the election? Come on, pay attention) has emerged as one of the biggest major-label rap singles of the year. Meanwhile, XXL magazine recently broke its long-standing ban on covering socially relevant topics with a cover story and panel discussion featuring outspoken artists Talib Kweli, Common, and dead prez, moderated by TV comedian Dave Chappelle (who just signed a contract extension for his Comedy Central show worth a reported $121 million -- even more evidence that meaningful social commentary can clock scrilla, too).
At the same time, the Bay Area's hip-hop indies have kept up the pace with their own sociopolitical musings. SF DJ and producer J-Boogie recently teamed with Deuce Eclipse, Tony Moses, and Zion-I on "You're the Murdera," a dubbed-out banger with lyrics like George Bush dropped the bomb while the cops watch me and Homeland security begins with equal rights and justice for all. Elsewhere, the best song on the upcoming Maroons EP Ambush (which drops October 26) is "If" -- perhaps the most overtly political statement yet by the alt.rap darlings of Quannum. In the song, Lateef rhymes in his trademarked enunciate-every-syllable style: If power and greed didn't tempt it/Maybe our leaders would be positive and productive/Instead of conniving, deceitful, and corrupted/Caught up by a love of dollars so seductive/If government wasn't enmeshed with big business/Maintaining its status and stretching its limits/Forsakin' religion and educatin' the children/Maybe society wouldn't be so sick.
Along those same lines, the third annual Power to the Peaceful Festival (held on the anniversary of 9/11) drew an estimated 40,000 folks to Golden Gate Park's Speedway Meadow for a free concert, at which peace, love, and yerba maté tea were much evident. The event continued a tradition harking back to the Grateful Dead and the Summer of Love, except that young sons and daughters of peace-lovin' hippies vastly outnumbered first-generation tie-dye-and-granola-heads (Wavy Gravy notwithstanding).
Another difference between then and now: hip-hop, via Blackalicious' Gift of Gab and Michael Franti and Spearhead, who thankfully rescued the proceedings from the jam-band monotony of the String Cheese Incident. Franti, for one, worked his PC image -- he got his start in the peace business long before it was popular or profitable -- to the hilt, arriving at a pre-performance press conference looking not unlike a barefoot, dreadlocked Jesus, sporting camouflage shorts and a T-shirt with the word "hemp" emblazoned on it.
Franti discussed his recent experiences traveling as a peace ambassador in Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan, noting there's a sense in these countries that voices of dissent aren't being heard: "Some people are angry in their homes. Other people are occupied or oppressed." Asked what the 9/11 anniversary means to him, he responded, "The idea that we can bomb other nations into subservience is wrong."
He went on to note that although the youth generation is brimming with activists, "The other side is that much more organized," adding that consolidation in the music industry has mirrored corporate globalization. As a result, he explained, knee-jerk reactions aren't all that effective -- "Throwing a brick at McDonald's is not enough" -- yet he stopped short of articulating an easy solution to society's ills: "I don't have the answer for that. I wish I did." He did, however, have a nifty sound bite ready: "I don't know if music can change the world overnight, but music can help us through a difficult night." He also emphasized that "we have to find new ways of communication," which sounds like fuzzy ideology -- until it's borne out by example.
Such as Gift of Gab's performance, which thrilled the overwhelmingly non-hip-hop crowd, which nonetheless grooved to every beat and every rhyme with the same fervor once reserved for Jerry Garcia solos. I will play this mic just like a guitar or sitar, Gab rapped during an a cappella freestyle session, which ended with the mantra-like utterance I am you, I am me, I am spirit in actuality and in actuality I am ... free. Gab earned thematic points (and quite possibly some new fans) with that line -- freedom, of course, being the whole point of peace.
As C2tE made his way past the obligatory drum circle and equally obligatory DJ tent, the true meaning of this gathering of tattooed-and-pierced tribes and neo-eco-hippies became clear: Intermingling brings about understanding of other cultures, and understanding leads directly to peace. Indeed, the possibility of peace in a post-9/11 world seemed entirely plausible as we smushed ourselves aboard an overcrowded Muni bus and slowly crawled back to downtown SF. We were all packed in like sardines and surrounded by strangers, yet no one spoke an unkind word or threw an angry elbow.
Indeed, as the War on Terror continues to be fought on both foreign soil and the domestic front, it may have the unintended result of ushering in a new wave of protest-oriented counterculture, quite possibly surpassing that of the Vietnam era. A month after the fact, the glow from that Golden Gate Park concert hasn't yet faded, even as the rancorous election-year hype has intensified. Maybe we've finally got an answer for Megadeth.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.