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NUCLEAR
Paying China for pressuring Pyongyang
Iraqi boy to return home after leukemia treatment
Iranian Leader Rules Out Halt in Uranium Enrichment
Iran - EU Talks to Resume Nov. 5 as Deadline Looms
Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
IAEA Says It Warned U.S. About Explosives
4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03
Armed Group Claims to Have Iraq Explosives
Powell Cautions Israel on Iran Action
White House Says Nations Agree on N. Korea
Protesters Weld Shut Entrance to Brazil Nuclear HQ
U.S. set to have missile defense by year's end
"Serious shortcomings" seen in security at Russian nuclear plants
Russia Denies Involvement in Iraq Weapons
Nuclear watchdog chief advocates tougher, broader Non-Proliferation Treaty
Feds join search for nuclear fuel missing from PG&E plant
Lawsuit Seeks Cleanup of Radioactive Land Near Los Angeles
Initiative 297 foes believe it will pass
MILITARY
Fewer guns, but tensions persist in Liberia
Biological Weapons Pose Major Threat, Say U.K. Scientists
British troops move closer to Baghdad
Powell's Comments in China Rile Taiwan
The Chinese Dragon submerges
Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War
Militants Slaughter 11 Iraqi Soldiers
Fallujah Talks, and Battle Planning, Continue
Provincial Capital Near Falluja Is Rapidly Slipping Into Chaos
Rumsfeld 'ignored Fallujah warnings'
Palestinians Debate Significance of Israel's Gaza Withdrawal
Arafat collapses; condition 'serious'
Israeli peace camp hails Sharon the hawk
Osama and his Shi'ite nemesis
NATO chief says it hopes to train 1,000 senior Iraqi officers a year
Another Side of the Georgian-Russian Conflict
CIA can't authenticate alleged al Qaeda tape
Nuclear watchdog chief advocates tougher, broader Non-Proliferation Treaty
U.S. Barred From Forcing Troops to Get Anthrax Shots
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
O'Connor touts global law
Judge Rebuffs GOP Effort to Contest Voters in Ohio
Homeland Security Agents Visit Toy Store
Hope Fades for Intelligence Bill
Intelligence Report to Assess Threat Posed by Terrorists
Policing Is Aggressive at Bush Events
Poll Finds Most Americans Have Not Prepared for a Terror Attack
U.N. Condemns Harsh Methods in Campaign Against Terror
POLITICS
U.S. Creates Ethics Panel on Priority for Flu Shots
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq
President ridicules foe's 'wild charges'
N. Korea, Cuba worst for press
India's Ex-Foreign Minister Assails Powell
Missing Munitions Become Focus of Presidential Race
Indians Build 'Emerging Presence' in Capital
FACTBOX: Positions of Bush/Kerry on Domestic Issues
Secret Document Suggests GOP Preparing to Challenge Black Vote in Florida
Heavy early-voter turnout overwhelms elections offices
OTHER
Russian Parliament Ratifies Kyoto Pact
A Closer Look at the Stem Cell Record
ACTIVISTS
Mary Kelly Vs The State Trial Updates:
The New Anti-War Protesters
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
Paying China for pressuring Pyongyang
Asia Times
By Ehsan Ahrari
Oct 28, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/China/FJ28Ad03.html
The use of pressure tactics is one of the ancient principles of diplomacy. Not many nations practice it as effectively as the United States, the lone superpower. The focus of Washington's pressure tactics this time is North Korea, and the recipient is none other the People's Republic of China, itself an ancient master of the subtle and not-so-subtle arts of diplomacy of all sorts, as well as deception.
In Washington's official circles, there has been a growing feeling that about the only effective way of getting Pyongyang to cooperate with the US on the nuclear-weapons-related conflict is to use the "China card". That means persuading Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang to make reasonable offers to the United States, concerning dismantling of its nuclear-weapons program in return for aid, energy and security guarantees, in order to break the current impasse. A related feeling in Washington is that Beijing is serving as an interlocutor only halfheartedly. The US is not wrong in its overall assessment of China's role in these negotiations. In the world of international diplomacy, the effectiveness or limitations of the "China card" will only be determined by China - no one else.
True, China does have influence on North Korea, an old socialist ally; it provides oil, humanitarian assistance and other aid to Pyongyang. It tries to persuade North Korea to open up, join the world community and enjoy the fruits of prosperity. Even so, China's influence is limited.
Wrinkles in the conflict, some old, some new As a precondition to rejoining the six-nation forum, involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, and continuing negotiations, North Korea wants the US "to contribute to a compensation package". In return, it claims it would agree to freeze its nuclear-weapons programs. In addition, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il wants US President George W Bush to abandon what he call America's "hostile policy" toward Pyongyang and accept its suggestion for a discussion of South Korea's recently disclosed and unauthorized experiments with nuclear materials in the past.
The Bush administration envisages North Korea's preference for receiving up-front compensation as being aimed at driving a wedge between the United States and its other four allies in the discussion. In view of the fact that Japan and South Korea have already made commitments to supply fuel oil if North Korea commits itself to end its nuclear program, the US is under pressure to make similar gestures. However, Washington refuses to budge from its insistence that it will offer a security guarantee to Kim Jong-il's regime only after it "discloses and allows the verification of the full extent of its programs". US Secretary of State Colin Powell reiterated this position during his trip to East Asia.
What is also complicating the US-North Korea conflict is a naval exercise, or Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), involving the United States, Japan and several other East Asian countries. The purpose of this exercise in Japan's Sagami Bay is to stem weapons proliferation and send a strong warning. North Korea knows full well that it is the intended target of such a measure. The fact that US Under Secretary of State John Bolton was there as an observer does not make Kim Jong-il very happy, since in the past Bolton has called Kim "human scum" and a "bloodsucker". Besides, Bolton recently referred to such an exercise as "a useful deterrent to companies that otherwise might be tempted to do business with proliferators like North Korea". Powell attempted to put the best face on the exercise by noting that "it is not a hostile act toward North Korea". But Kim Jong-il remains utterly unimpressed.
What should China make of this public good-cop-bad-cop show? It appears that Beijing will stay engaged in the six-nation dialogue solely as a continuation of a ritual leading up to the US presidential election next Tuesday. China also knows that it can put ample pressure on North Korea, but not without significant payoffs from the US for China itself. Such a payoff must come in several ways:
# First, a clear enunciation of US-China relations must be made in the first part of next year in Washington. Even if Bush is re-elected, the United States must make discernable concessions regarding the Taiwan reunification conflict. # Second, the United States must also back off from selling sophisticated weapons platforms to Taiwan, an issue that has consistently annoyed leaders in Beijing. The most complicating aspect of these two expectations is that the US Congress is very much involved, and may not budge when it comes to abandoning a democratic ally, Taiwan. # Third, from the Chinese point of view, Washington and China must arrive at some new understanding in negotiations over weapons sales to People's Republic of China. Here again,the role of the US Congress remains vital. # Fourth, if George W Bush is re-elected, then China must see the framework of his administration's engagement in East Asia early next year in order to determine whether it adopts a strident posture or a friendly one toward China. On this issue, the White House has considerable leeway, especially if the neo-conservatives were to be consistently sidelined in the White House in a second Bush administration. The likelihood of such an occurrence - sidelining the neo-cons - appears terribly remote.
If Senator John F Kerry wins the White House, China knows that it must get serious about putting pressure on Kim Jong-il to unravel its nuclear-weapons program. However, a president Kerry must also assure North Korea first that he will not continue to take the United States down the road to hostility toward the Kim Jong-il regime.
Conclusions These pressure and counter-pressure games involving the United States, China and North Korea will become quite intriguing if Kerry is elected. The start of a new game is almost always more interesting than the continuation of an old one, where the participants' moves are pretty much anticipated. China will let the US play the "China card" as long Beijing gets fulfilled some of the cherished goals of its own strategic affairs, especially concerning Taiwan. Kerry, with no previous ideological baggage from the White House, might be more prone to deal with China and North Korea on the basis of pragmatism and national interests than Bush, whose ideological preoccupation has been seen as a major obstacle for the past four years by friends and foes alike.
Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst in Alexandria, Virginia.
-------- depleted uranium
Iraqi boy to return home after leukemia treatment
Japan Today
October 28, 2004
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=316993
NAGOYA - A 5-year-old Iraqi boy will return home Sunday after undergoing treatment for leukemia, which he is believed to have contracted from depleted uranium used in Iraq war, the boy's mother and Japanese supporters said Wednesday.
The boy, Abbas A-Ali Al-Malky, and his 26-year-old mother, Anwar Abed Mawasa, appeared before reporters in the city of Nagoya to express their gratitude to their supporters. (Kyodo News)
-------- iran
Iranian Leader Rules Out Halt in Uranium Enrichment
By Susanna Loof
Associated Press
Thursday, October 28, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3619-2004Oct27.html
VIENNA, Oct. 27 -- Iran's supreme leader threatened Wednesday to pull out of negotiations if European countries press their demand for total suspension of uranium enrichment, as a new round of talks ended without an agreement to avert the possible threat of U.N. sanctions.
Britain, France and Germany are trying to work out a deal that would defuse Western concerns about Iran's nuclear program, which the United States says aims to develop nuclear weapons.
The Europeans are offering Iran incentives -- a trade deal and civilian nuclear technology, including a light-water research reactor -- in return for a halt in enrichment, which can produce fuel for both nuclear energy and atomic weapons.
They have warned that most European states will back the United States' call to refer Iran's nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions if Iran doesn't give up all uranium enrichment activities before a Nov. 25 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. body.
In talks Wednesday, Iran's delegates insisted on the right to enrich uranium. And the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ruled out any long-term suspension of the program. "A long-term suspension of enrichment is a discussion without logic," Khamenei said, according to state-run television in Tehran. Still, Iranian negotiators held out the possibility of a compromise with the Europeans. Iranian and British officials said another round of talks would be held soon.
"We haven't closed the door for an understanding . . . but will reach compromise if there is a balanced package of agreements. Obligations and confidence-building measures have to be bilateral," Hossein Mousavian, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, told his country's state-run radio Wednesday. "There has to be no discrimination against Iran."
Iran insists that its nuclear activities are peaceful and geared solely toward generating electricity. The United States, pointing to Iran's vast oil reserves, contends that it is running a covert nuclear weapons program.
Heightening the U.S. concerns, Iran has resumed testing, assembling and making centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
--------
Iran - EU Talks to Resume Nov. 5 as Deadline Looms
October 28, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Nuclear talks between the EU and Iran will resume in Paris on Nov. 5 with Tehran facing a looming deadline to agree to freeze uranium enrichment or risk referral to the U.N. Security Council, diplomats said on Thursday.
The Paris talks follow a second round of discussions between Iranian, British, German and French officials in Vienna on Wednesday described as positive and constructive by both sides.
``The EU has a positive feeling about the meeting yesterday. The talks were substantive,'' said an EU diplomat.
``The next round will be in Paris on November 5,'' said a diplomat from one of the EU's three biggest countries. A Western diplomat confirmed the date and venue for the talks.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iranian negotiators hinted during Wednesday's talks that Iran was prepared to freeze uranium enrichment for a short period.
``Their opening gambit was for the suspension to last two or three months,'' said the EU trio diplomat.
The EU has called for Iran -- which insists its atomic program is geared solely to electricity production -- to agree to an indefinite freeze on enrichment which can be used to make either nuclear power reactor fuel or bomb-grade material.
But Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all matters of state, said Tehran would not accept a long-term enrichment freeze and warned it could pull out of talks altogether if the EU made ``illogical'' demands.
The EU has warned it will back U.S. calls for Iran to be reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions at the Nov. 25 IAEA meeting if the enrichment suspension is not verifiably in place by then.
``They need to agree to the suspension by around Nov. 10 in order for the U.N. to verify it in time for the Nov. 25 board meeting'' of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the EU trio diplomat said.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the enrichment freeze must be in place well before Nov. 25 if it is to be verified and included in the agency's report, which is normally sent to board members about 10 days before the meeting.
But another EU diplomat said the Iranians are ``masters at playing us right to the brink'' and that an agreement may not come until a couple of days before the IAEA meeting.
While Iran is prepared to temporarily freeze enrichment as a ``confidence-building measure'' it refuses to contemplate scrapping enrichment for good as the EU and Washington wants.
``Cessation (of enrichment) is out of the question,'' Hossein Mousavian, a senior Iranian security official, told Reuters in Tehran.
``This is our red line. If it is the other party's red line as well then we may have to try a period of confrontation in the Security Council,'' he said. ``But Iran is ready for confidence-building measures to assure the world our uranium enrichment program will never be diverted (to military use).''
The EU is offering Iran various incentives to scrap its enrichment activities including a guaranteed supply of reactor fuel, help with building a light-water power reactor and a resumption of stalled trade talks.
-------- iraq / inspections
Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
October 28, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041028-122637-6257r.htm
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.
The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.
The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.
Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.
"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.
"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.
According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.
It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.
A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.
A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.
However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.
The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.
Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.
Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.
The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.
Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.
"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.
Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.
The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.
Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.
The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.
Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.
The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.
Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
--------
IAEA Says It Warned U.S. About Explosives after April 2003 looting of nuclear complex
October 28, 2004
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WEAPONS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- U.S. officials were warned about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation after another facility - the country's main nuclear complex - was looted in April 2003, the U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned American officials directly about what was kept at Al-Qaqaa, the main storage facility in Iraq for so-called high explosives, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
The disclosure shed new light on what the United States knew about Al-Qaqaa, which held 377 tons of high explosives that have vanished - an issue that has become a flashpoint in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign.
The explosives can be used to make car bombs that insurgents have used to target U.S.-led forces in Iraq. On Thursday, an armed group in Iraq claimed in a video to have obtained a large amount of the missing material - HMX, RDX and PETN - and threatened to use it against foreign troops.
Iraqi officials say the materials were taken amid looting sometime after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces on April 9, 2003, though the Pentagon and President Bush are suggesting the ordnance could have been moved before the United States invaded on March 20, 2003.
An IAEA official told The Associated Press the explosives were stored in hundreds of large, heavy cardboard drums that probably would have required trucks and forklifts to handle. The U.S. military has said it would be difficult to haul away so much material unnoticed once troops reached the area.
Fleming did not say which officials were notified or when, but she said the IAEA - which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal two months before the war - alerted the United States about Al-Qaqaa after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted. The IAEA said it informed U.S. officials separately of the Tuwaitha looting on April 10.
"After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspector alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," she said.
"It is also important to note that this was the main high explosives storage facility in Iraq, and it was well-known through IAEA reports to the Security Council," Fleming said.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei informed the United Nations in February 2003, and again in April of that year, that he was concerned about HMX explosives, which were stored at Al-Qaqaa, some 30 miles south of Baghdad.
The explosives' disappearance recently has dominated the presidential campaign, with Democratic nominee John Kerry saying the Bush administration's poor planning led to the loss of the dangerous material. The Pentagon contends Saddam Hussein's regime may have removed the explosives before the war.
The IAEA also sought Thursday to clarify reports that the amount of missing explosives may have been far less than what the Iraqis said in an Oct. 10 report to the nuclear agency.
ABC News, citing IAEA inspection documents, reported Wednesday that the Iraqis had declared 141 tons of RDX explosives at Al-Qaqaa in July 2002, but that the site held only three tons when it was checked in January 2003. The network said that could suggest that 138 tons were removed from the facility long before the March 2003 invasion.
Vice President Dick Cheney seized upon the ABC report Thursday, telling supporters in Wisconsin that Kerry had gotten the facts wrong in criticizing the Bush administration for the disappearance of the explosives.
Kerry is "just dead wrong. ... We know ... upwards to 125 tons had been removed" in January 2003 before the invasion, Cheney said. "He's just plain wrong on the facts."
But Fleming said most of the RDX - about 125 tons - was kept at Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located about 30 miles outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. She also said about 10 tons already had been reported by Iraq as having been used for non-prohibited purposes between July 2002 and January 2003.
"IAEA inspectors visited Al-Mahaweel on Jan. 15, 2003, and verified the RDX inventory by weighing sampling," Fleming said. She said the RDX at Al-Mahaweel was not under seal but was subject to IAEA monitoring.
"IAEA inspectors were in the process of verifying this statement (the Iraqi inventory of its weapons) ... and would have proceeded later had they stayed in Iraq," Fleming said. The nuclear agency's inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the invasion and have not been allowed to return for general inspections despite ElBaradei's requests that they be allowed to finish their work.
The agency became involved at Al-Qaqaa because of the presence of 214 tons of HMX, which - like RDX - is a key component in plastic explosives but also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear weapon. Fleming said it was the HMX that was the agency's main focus.
ABC said the inspection report noted the seals at Al-Qaqaa may have been useless because the storage bunkers had ventilation slats on the sides that could have been removed to give looters access to the explosives.
But Fleming said the inspectors had also checked the ventilation slats to ensure they had not been tampered with, and concluded "the confinement was sufficient" as long as the site was regularly checked. They could no longer do that once they pulled out on March 16.
IAEA inspectors last saw the Al-Qaqaa explosives on Jan. 15, 2003, when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Inspectors visited the site again on March 1, 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.
U.N. inspectors focusing on Iraq's long-range missile program visited the sprawling site on March 15, 2003 to tag missile warheads; they too left Iraq before the war started.
Agency inspectors have returned twice to Iraq since the war but focused only on Tuwaitha, a nuclear complex 12 miles south of Baghdad. They have not been allowed back to Al-Qaqaa.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
--------
MISSING EXPLOSIVES
4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03
October 28, 2004
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ and JIM DWYER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28bomb.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.
The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.
Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility.
The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi forces removed some explosives before the invasion.
But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it.
"The looting started after the collapse of the regime," said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya. But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad.
Earlier this month, on Oct. 10, the directorate of national monitoring at the Ministry of Science and Technology notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives, which are used in demolition and missiles and are the raw material for plastic explosives, were missing. The agency has monitored the explosives because they can also be used as the initiator of an atomic bomb.
Agency officials examined the explosives in January 2003 and noted in early March that their seals were still in place. On April 3, the Third Infantry Division arrived with the first American troops.
Chris Anderson, a photographer for U.S. News and World Report who was with the division's Second Brigade, recalled that the area was jammed with American armor on April 3 and 4, which he believed made the removal of the explosives unlikely. "It would be quite improbable for this amount of weapons to be looted at that time because of the traffic jam of armor," he said.
The brigade blew up numerous caches of arms throughout the area, he said. Mr. Anderson said he did not enter the munitions compound.
The Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division arrived outside the site on April 10, under the command of Col. Joseph Anderson. The brigade had been ordered to move quickly to Baghdad because of civil disorder there after Mr. Hussein's government fell on April 9.
They gathered at Al Qaqaa, about 30 miles south, simply as a matter of convenience, Colonel Anderson said in an interview this week. He said that when he arrived at the site - unaware of its significance - he saw no signs of looting, but was not paying close attention.
Because he thought the brigade would be moving on to Baghdad within hours, Al Qaqaa was of no importance to his mission, he said, and he was unaware of the explosives that international inspectors said were hidden inside.
Pentagon officials said Wednesday that analysts were examining surveillance photographs of the munitions site. But they expressed doubts that the photographs, which showed vehicles at the location on several occasions early in the conflict, before American troops moved through the area, would be able to indicate conclusively when the explosives were removed.
Col. David Perkins, who commanded the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, called it "very highly improbable" that 380 tons of explosives could have been trucked out of Al Qaqaa in the weeks after American troops arrived.
Moving that much material, said Colonel Perkins, who spoke Wednesday to news agencies and cable television, "would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks."
He conceded that some looting of the site had taken place. But a chemical engineer who worked at Al Qaqaa and identified himself only as Khalid said that once troops left the base itself, people streamed in to steal computers and anything else of value from the offices. They also took munitions like artillery shells, he said.
Mr. Mezher, the mechanic, said it took the looters about two weeks to disassemble heavy machinery at the site and carry that off after the smaller items were gone.
James Glanz reported from Baghdad for this article and Jim Dwyer from New York. Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Khalid W. Hussein and Zainab Obeid fromAl Qaqaa.
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Armed Group Claims to Have Iraq Explosives
Oct 28, 2004
The Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041028/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_explosives_claim_4
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An armed group claimed in a video Thursday to have obtained a large amount of explosives missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq and threatened to use them against foreign troops.
A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of "the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."
The claim couldn't be independently verified. The speaker was surrounded by masked, armed men standing in front of a black banner with the group's name on it in the tape obtained by Associated Press Television News.
"We promise God and the Iraqi people that we will use it against the occupation forces and those who cooperate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city," the man added.
Nearly 400 tons of conventional explosives have disappeared from the al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The U.N. agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei, reported the disappearance to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, two weeks after Iraqi officials told the nuclear agency that 377 tons of explosives had vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."
The disappearance of the explosives has become a huge campaign issue in the U.S. presidential election.
Meanwhile, Iraqi extremists in videotape aired Thursday by Al-Jazeera television showed what they said was a Polish woman hostage held in Iraq and demanded that Poland remove all its troops from Iraq.
The group, which called itself the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades, said the woman, who was not identified, works with U.S. troops in Iraq. They also demanded the release of all Iraqi female prisoners.
Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman said the woman was a longtime Iraq resident with Iraqi citizenship and was believed to have been abducted Wednesday night from her home in Baghdad. Abdul Rahman did not release her name.
A middle-aged woman with gray hair and dressed in a pink polka-dotted blouse sat in front of two masked gunmen, one of whom was pointing a pistol at her head. Her voice was not audible on the tape.
Al-Jazeera said the woman called on Polish troops to leave the country and for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to release all female detainees from the Abu Ghraib prison. The announcer said she had been "working in Iraq for a long time."
In Warsaw, a Polish Defense Ministry official said she apparently did not belong to any of the Polish military units. Polish television TVN24 reported that all Polish journalists in Iraq have been accounted for.
Ahmed al-Sheikh, Al-Jazeera's editor-in-chief, said the kidnappers did not mention a specific threat on the tape nor did they give a deadline for their demands to be met. He would not say when or how the station obtained the tape.
Poland commands some 6,000 troops from 15 nations - including some 2,400 from Poland - in the Babil, Karbala and Wasit provinces.
The armed group had also claimed responsibility in the September kidnapping of 10 Turkish hostages, who were released this month.
Late Wednesday, Al-Jazeera aired a video showing British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who again pleaded with Britain to withdraw its forces from Iraq even as some 800 British troops began deploying toward the Baghdad area. They were expected to relieve U.S. troops in the capital who are being preparing for a major assault on insurgent areas west and north of the capital.
Hassan, 59, who ran CARE International's operations in Iraq, has been the most high-profile of foreign hostages abducted in Iraq. No group has claimed responsibility in her abduction.
She also asked for the release of female Iraqi detainees and the closure of CARE's operations in Iraq.
A day earlier, a militant Web site ran a claim by the al-Qaida-linked group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowing to kill a 24-year-old Japanese hostage within 48 hours unless Japan withdrew its 500 troops from the country.
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi swiftly refused the demand, saying he wouldn't give in to terrorists.
Meanwhile, fighting continued on several fronts.
_ U.S. aircraft bombed a suspected rebel safehouse Thursday in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, killing two people, the U.S. military and witnesses said.
_ A car bomb exploded Thursday in southern Baghdad, killing a U.S. soldier and at least one Iraqi civilian, the U.S. military said.
_ Insurgents clashed with U.S. forces Thursday in the restive central Iraq town of Ramadi, leaving two people dead, according to the U.S. military and hospital officials.
-------- israel
Powell Cautions Israel on Iran Action
October 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iran-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell advised Israel on Wednesday that diplomacy and not force is the way to deal with Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Two decades ago, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi reactor to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.
With Iran now moving in that direction, Powell said ``there was a lot of speculation and horror stories and other stories about what this might lead to in the way of crisis, and part of that speculation is that the Israelis might do something or not do something.''
``I have no information on that,'' Powell said on CNBC. ``And I think the whole world, to include Israel, is trying to find a diplomatic and peaceful solution to this problem.''
Powell said Iran had a program that could produce nuclear weapons, but he did not think it could be done overnight or in the next several months.
``It's going to take them time,'' he said.
In talks Wednesday in Vienna, Iran's delegates insisted in a meeting with British, French and German officials on the right to enrich uranium, which is a key ingredient to making nuclear weapons.
And in Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled out any long-term suspension of the program.
Powell said it was time to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose economic pressure on Iran. ``It is not in the interests of the region or the world for Iran to be moving in this direction,'' he said.
The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said at the daily media briefing that taking Iran before the U.N. Security Council remains the U.S. position even with the talks in Vienna.
``At this point, we have not seen anything different,'' he said. ``But in terms of Iranian commitments or behavior, we will have to see how the meeting went.''
The Europeans were believed to be offering Iran fuel and trade if it halted its nuclear programs.
-------- korea
White House Says Nations Agree on N. Korea
October 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-North-Korea-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pledging flexibility in trying to get North Korea to end its nuclear weapons programs, the Bush administration on Wednesday said there was ``a remarkable similarity of views'' among nations joined with the United States in the effort.
``The differences are being exaggerated,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said of reports of discord with South Korea and China over tactics being used in trying to reopen joint negotiations with North Korea.
Secretary of State Colin Powell returned Tuesday from Japan, China and South Korea, all parties to the negotiations, with no sign North Korea was ready to return to the table soon.
``The thrust of the trip was from all of us how to get them back to the table, how to press forward as soon as possible,'' Boucher said. ``And that was one where we and the Japanese and the South Koreans and Chinese share, I think, a remarkable similarly of views.''
In Seoul on Tuesday, however, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon said the United States and its partners ``must come up with a more creative and realistic proposal so that North Korea can come to the negotiating table as soon as possible.''
Earlier, the official New Chinese News Agency released a comment by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing saying ``we wish the U.S. side would go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude on the issue.''
But Boucher on Wednesday said, ``We do understand the need in negotiations to be creative and flexible. We are prepared to go back to the table and listen to what the North Koreans might have to say about our proposal.''
And, Boucher said, ``we are prepared to discuss that proposal with other governments at the bargaining table.''
The United States has offered North Korea written assurances that there is no intention of a U.S. attack. Also, as part of a package to stop North Korea's programs, Japan and South Korea might offer economic incentives once the talks make headway.
The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that North Korea already has one or two nuclear weapons, and some U.S. intelligence analysts say North Korea may have as many as six.
--------
Protesters Weld Shut Entrance to Brazil Nuclear HQ
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
October 28, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27881/story.htm
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Greenpeace activists welded shut the entrance to the headquarters of Brazil's state nuclear power company this week and chained themselves together in front of the building.
The pro-environment group said it was protesting against new investments in Brazil's nuclear program, including a government plan to enrich uranium that has caused a dispute with the United Nations over nonproliferation inspections.
The unfurled a banner outside the Brazilian Nuclear Industries (INB) in Rio de Janeiro demanding an end to Brazil's "nuclear adventure."
"We want to know if the population agrees with the proliferation of nuclear energy in Brazil," one protester said before firefighters cut the activists free and police led them away.
The uranium enrichment program has been in the headlines since Brazil refused to allow officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to fully inspect its new Resende uranium enrichment plant, northwest of Rio de Janeiro.
The IAEA wants full access to Resende to ensure no uranium is diverted for weapons but Brazil will not allow access to the plant's centrifuges, saying it fears industrial espionage.
Brazil, home to the world's sixth-largest proven reserves of uranium, says its enrichment operations will be entirely peaceful and small compared to other countries. Brazil has two nuclear reactors and is considering a third.
A Science and Technology Ministry spokesman said the government was revising Brazil's nuclear program and hoped to present recommendations to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by the end of the year.
A commentary by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control published in Friday's issue of the journal Science said the Resende plant had the potential to produce enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs every year, a claim Brazil has denied.
-------- missile defense
U.S. set to have missile defense by year's end
Army News Service
By John A Emmert
October 28, 2004
http://www4.army.mil/news/article.php?story=6496
WASHINGTON - The United States will have the capability to defend itself against a limited attack by long-range ballistic missiles when the missile defense system becomes operational later this year.
The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command agency has built, tested and verified an initial defense operations capability, said Thomas M. Devanney, deputy program director for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Agency. SMDC is prepared to put it on alert while continuing testing and development on the in-place hardware and software.
The missile defense system is a collection of ground and sea-based radars, communication systems designed to detect, track and destroy an enemy warhead before it can reach the United States.
SMDC has been working on fielding a response to threats since the president declared the intent to have the capability to defend the country against ballistic missiles less than two years ago, said Devanney at the AUSA Annual meeting.
"Since the 30th of September, we've been going through a series of transition exercises with the warfighter," said Devanney. Participants have gone through the checklists and procedures and the system has been close to becoming armed a number of times. The only thing they didn't do was mechanically arm the interceptors.
Fort Greely, Alaska, has five ground-based interceptors emplaced and is set to receive the sixth during the first week of November, said Devanney. Plans to place an additional 20 interceptors within the next few years are underway. Allen Army Airfield has been upgraded so interceptors can be flown directly to the site.
Army National Guard Soldiers are now manning the fire control stations at Fort Greely and Colorado Springs, Devanney said. Either station can operate the system.
Ground-based midcourse defense is the centerpiece of the operation, said Devanney. It has one of the largest fire control loops ever built with 20,000 miles of fiber optic cable and nine satellite communications links.
Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is coming online before the end of the calendar year with four more silos and an in-flight communication system.
At Beale Air Force Base, Calif., all the computing hardware inside the radar has been replaced, Devanney said. All the hardware is in place and it was tracking satellites within days. It is going through final testing and will be online by the end of December.
By the end of 2005, the largest X-band radar for target tracking and identification ever built will be completed. Built on a floating platform, the structure has four pontoons each the size of a fleet ballistic missile submarine. The structure is 14 stories tall and the radar is 110 feet tall.
The defense system now has the infrastructure and testing simulations to provide confidence, said Devanney. SMDC is now focused on sustaining and upgrading the system.
-------- russia
"Serious shortcomings" seen in security at Russian nuclear plants
MOSCOW (AFP)
Oct 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041028152755.kyoelshz.html
Security at three Russian nuclear power plants has "serious shortcomings" despite steps to improve security levels, Russia's deputy prosecutor general, Vladimir Kolesnikov, said Thursday.
"Following checks by the prosecutor, serious shortcomings were discovered in the protection of nuclear stations" at three sites in Russia, the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Kolesnikov as saying.
"Certain steps to modernize the security systems were taken, but the problems still persist," he said, without specifying what those shortcomings were.
The three nuclear stations he referred to -- at Kola, Novovoronezh and Smolensk -- are located in regions of Russia bordering Finland, Ukraine and Belarus.
Kolesnikov also said that security checks had also shown up flaws in protection of Russia's huge network of oil pipelines, the report said.
In early October, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said nuclear sites in Russia had adequate protection against terrorism following a string of spectacular attacks that rocked the country in August and September.
Russian environmentalists have on numerous occasions warned authorities against the risk of attacks on nuclear sites in Russia and have called for them to be better protected.
--------
Russia Denies Involvement in Iraq Weapons
Oct 28, 2004
Associated Press
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041028/ap_on_re_eu/russia_iraq_weapons_1
MOSCOW - Russia angrily denied allegations Thursday that Russian forces had smuggled a cache of high explosives out of Iraq (news - web sites) prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "ridiculous."
"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structures couldn't have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because all Russian military experts left Iraq when the international sanctions were introduced during the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites)," he told The Associated Press.
The denial followed a story in The Washington Times on Thursday that quoted a high-ranking U.S. defense official alleging that Russian special forces had "almost certainly" helped spirit out the hundreds of tons of high explosives that went missing from the al-Qaqaa base. The newspaper based its report on an interview with John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security.
Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency that 377 tons of explosives had vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security." The compounds, HMX and RDX, are key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks.
Russia' charge d'affaires in Iraq, Ilya Morgunov, also denied the report.
"I didn't hear about any weapons to be taken out," Interfax quoted him as saying. "Moreover, there was nobody to take them out, because we actually evacuated all of our personnel."
He said there had been no Russian special forces in Iraq, only civilian specialists working for foreign firms.
-------- treaties
Nuclear watchdog chief advocates tougher, broader Non-Proliferation Treaty
GENEVA (AFP)
Thu Oct 28, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041028/wl_afp/un_nuclear_npt_iaea_041028185137
- Tighter global controls on the export of nuclear material and technology must be included in a bolstered nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) up for debate next year, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog said.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei insisted in an article for a UN review that the multilateral treaty -- whose effectiveness has been questioned by the United States -- remained "the essential anchor" for global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
Its weaknesses in the face of the advancing availability of nuclear weapons know-how -- now thought to extend to 40 countries -- should be tackled by bringing more countries on board a stronger NPT at a review conference due in 2005, he added.
"The nuclear export control system should be universalised and treaty-based, while preserving the inalienable rights of all states to peaceful nuclear technology," ElBaradei wrote.
One hundred and eighty-eight countries have joined the 1970 NPT limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, including the five main nuclear superpowers, but not emerging weapons states India, Pakistan, or Israel.
North Korea (news - web sites) pulled out last year.
India earlier this month repeated that it was not ready to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying the pact imposes stricter conditions on fledgling nuclear states than on established nuclear powers.
However, the NPT's system of checks on technology and material exports are not binding, and only 61 of the signatories have subscribed to them.
The flaw was one of the triggers for the current tensions between Iran and the IAEA over its enrichment facilities.
The United States has also accused countries of seeking nuclear weapons capability while under the cloak of the NPT.
ElBaradei said nuclear inspectors must have the right to conduct checks in all countries, while transparent limits must be placed on processing of plutonium and weapons grade enriched uranium.
No country should be allowed to bow out of the NPT "without clear consequences" before the UN Security Council, he added, rejecting the current allowance for three months notice.
North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003 after it revived the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, marking the first time any country has withdrawn from a multilateral arms control treaty.
The move raised international tensions and prompted warnings of "nuclear anarchy".
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Feds join search for nuclear fuel missing from PG&E plant
October 28, 2004
American City Business Journals
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2004/10/25/daily37.html
The federal government is joining an investigation into how Pacific Gas & Electric Co. lost track of three nuclear fuel rods, the Associated Press reports.
The National Regulatory Commission will send a team of investigators to join the search for fuel rods that officials at the Humboldt Bay Power Plant can't find.
The rods have been unaccounted for since San Francisco-based PG&E -- the plant's operator -- began an inventory of a pool used to store spent nuclear rods.
Since August, PG&E crews have been using remote cameras to search less accessible areas of the pool.
NRC officials don't think the old fuel rods are in an unsafe place.
"We do believe it is in the spent fuel pool or in a spent fuel facility," said commission spokesman Victor Dricks.
The commission's inspection was launched because of the scope and complexity of PG&E's investigation. The commission also wants to evaluate PG&E's radioactive materials accountability and control program.
--------
Lawsuit Seeks Cleanup of Radioactive Land Near Los Angeles
October 28, 2004
LOS ANGELES, California, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-28-09.asp#anchor1
Two conservation groups and the City of Los Angeles are suing the Bush administration, alleging it broke longstanding commitments to clean up a radioactively contaminated nuclear facility in Southern California.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a federal reactor testing site near Los Angeles, housed 10 reactors, one of which experienced a partial meltdown in 1959.
Despite radioactive and chemical contamination, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said last year that it would not clean up the site according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
Instead, DOE intends to leave 99 percent of the radioactively contaminated soil untouched and then release the land for potential residential development, the plaintiffs allege.
According to the EPA, the cleanup criteria chosen by the Energy Department would permit concentrations of some radioactive materials in the soil 10,000 times higher than EPA remediation goals - concentrations that pose the risk of cancer to one out of every 50 people exposed.
Still, once cleanup is complete, the DOE said, "future use of the property for residential purposes is probable."
"Surface and groundwater contamination by toxic and radioactive substances does not stop at city borders or respect county lines," said City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. "My office will continue to look out for the health and safety of the residents of Los Angeles and Ventura County to ensure that responsibility for cleanup of the problems at this facility is properly addressed."
The lawsuit, filed October 21 in federal court in San Francisco by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Committee to Bridge the Gap, and the City of Los Angeles, alleges violations of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and CERCLA, the Superfund law.
It seeks to force the Energy Department to conduct a thorough environmental review of the site and to clean up the radioactive and chemical contamination according to the highest standards.
The 2,800 acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory is located on hills between the Simi and San Fernando Valleys in southeastern Ventura County, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. For decades, the site was used to test nuclear reactors and rocket engines. Scientists suspect that the 1959 meltdown released more radioactivity than the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.
Two other reactors suffered serious accidents in 1964 and 1969, when large numbers of nuclear fuel rods cracked. Radioactive contamination from decades of accidents and spills is widespread. Toxic chemicals such as TCE, dioxins, PCBs and heavy metals also pollute the site - by-products of rocket engine testing and nuclear activities.
Fifteen years ago, the two plaintiff groups joined forces with local community groups and shut down nuclear operations at the site.
Late last year, EPA officials found the Energy Department in violation of the DOE-EPA 1995 Joint Policy that commits all DOE sites to be cleaned up consistent with EPA standards.
EPA also found that under DOE's new plans, it would not be safe to release the site for any unrestricted use such as homes, and that the only acceptable use would be day hikes with limitations on picnicking.
"This case could affect nuclear contamination and public health nationwide," said Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney with NRDC and director of its Urban Program. "If the administration can ignore sensible cleanup standards here, at a site with a long history of nuclear accidents and even a reactor meltdown, it will do so anywhere. But if we can enforce a strong federal cleanup policy at Santa Susana, we will establish a precedent to safeguard the public nationwide."
"It is hard to conceive of putting houses on top of a former meltdown site," said Daniel Hirsch, president of CBG, another party to the suit and a longtime watchdog of Santa Susana Field Laboratory. "We sue to get the government to live up to its promises, to clean up the mess it made, and place no more people at risk."
"We've been lied to for 20 years about the health consequences of this place," said Barbara Johnson, a cancer survivor who lives near the field lab. "I'm so grateful that someone is finally going to force them to clean up this awful mess. It shouldn't take a lawsuit to get the government to protect us."
-------- us nuc waste
Initiative 297 foes believe it will pass
tri-cityherald.com
By Annette Cary
October 28, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/elections/story/5720063p-5653503c.html
- Even the most ardent opponents of Initiative 297 hold out little hope that it will be defeated in Tuesday's election.
"I think it will pass and that's unfortunate," said Gary Petersen of the Tri-City Industrial Development Council. "It will not help cleanup. It will not speed it up, and unfortunately, when it passes, it will go to the courts."
The initiative, backed by Heart of America Northwest, would block shipments of waste to the Hanford reservation until waste there from the past production of plutonium for nuclear weapons is cleaned up.
Heart of America, which has poured nearly $1 million into promoting the initiative, sees it as a way to keep Washington from becoming a dumping ground for the nation's nuclear waste left from the massive weapons buildup of the Cold War.
The organization sees signs that the Department of Energy may not be committed to cleaning up all radioactive leaks into the ground at Hanford and may plan to abandon some of the high-level radioactive waste in Hanford's massive underground tanks.
But the campaign message that seems to have captured voters' attention is an image of 92,775 truckloads of radioactive waste rolling through their towns, within yards of schools and libraries, on their way to Hanford.
The Department of Energy has taken no stand on Initiative 297. But the message voters are receiving troubles DOE officials.
"Frankly, it's irresponsible to drum up concerns about transportation of waste," said Colleen French, DOE spokeswoman in Richland.
DOE says a recent record of decision limits incoming shipments to Hanford to 5,800 truckloads of mostly low-level radioactive waste, some of it mixed with chemicals.
In turn, DOE plans to ship far worse radioactive materials out of Hanford. High-level tank waste, barrels of materials contaminated with plutonium and irradiated nuclear fuel are planned to be shipped to Nevada or New Mexico for permanent disposal. Weapons-grade plutonium also will be removed from Hanford and likely sent to South Carolina.
Of the 405 million curies of radioactivity at Hanford today, about 90 percent should be gone by the end of cleanup, largely because so much of the most radioactive materials are planned to be shipped elsewhere, French said.
"Is this area really ready to accept leaving everything at Hanford?" she asked.
TRIDEC is expecting the U.S. Justice Department to be ready to file suit if the initiative passes. It's preparing a friend of the court brief to file in support.
Cleanup at Hanford is sure to be delayed while legal issues are being resolved, said Grant Nelson, governmental affairs director at the Association of Washington Business.
The association sees three potential areas for challenges.
State law allows initiatives to address only one issue. I-297 limits shipments of waste, provides for an advisory board and collects a surcharge on federal cleanup money to be distributed to local governments and public interest groups, likely including Heart of America.
"The initiative is limited to one topic: the cleanup of Hanford," said Bob Cooper, press secretary for Yes on I-297.
But the business association sees a topic bound for legal interpretation.
It also questions whether states can levy a surcharge on federal spending.
But the crucial legal question may be whether the state has the authority to stop the federal government from shipping waste to Hanford.
Gerald Pollet of Heart of America believes Washington has that authority under the Superfund law. It allows states to bar more waste from being added to sites that do not meet environmental standards.
Opponents of the initiative believe that forbidding the federal government to bring waste to Hanford violates the Atomic Energy Act and interstate commerce laws.
"This will be found as the state trying to govern federal law," Petersen said. "It will be kicked out by the federal courts."
While legal issues are being decided, the federal government may be less willing to fund cleanup, Nelson said. About $2 billion is expected to be spent this year at Hanford, with funding dropping as cleanup is accomplished.
Under the Tri-Party Agreement the federal government is legally obligated to clean up Hanford and will have to continue to spend money to meet legal deadlines, say supporters of the initiative.
But the power of the Tri-Party Agreement may pale next to the pressure to reduce the federal deficit, say opponents of the initiative.
"It may not want to put a lot of money into something unknown," Nelson said. "With the most consistent funding in a long time for Hanford, we do not want to be sending the signal to the feds that this might not be the best use of the money."
Reporter Annette Cary can be reached at 582-1533 or via e-mail at acary@tri-cityherald.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Fewer guns, but tensions persist in Liberia
The Christian Science Monitor
By Mike Crawley
October 28, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/1028/p04s01-woaf.html
ZWEDRU, LIBERIA - Armed gangs of young men no longer roam the streets of this town hacked out of the dense forests of eastern Liberia, an area laid waste by 14 years of war. A United Nations-sponsored disarmament program has brought enough security to Zwedru that traders sell their goods from stalls along the main street without fear of looting, while men sit chatting at the tea shops until late in the evening.
As Sunday's deadline for the disarmament of Liberia's former warring factions nears, most observers are calling the process a success, albeit a qualified one. More than 90,000 combatants have been demobilized and 26,000 weapons destroyed.
But the complexity of truly bringing peace to this war-ravaged nation becomes apparent one evening when angry voices drown out the buzz of conversation at a tea shop. The argument is about money. A one-time rebel commander is demanding a cut from the payments made to his former soldiers, and he doesn't seem to care who hears.
Attempts at extortion like this one are just one of the unintended consequences of Liberia's disarmament program, which has become one of the biggest forces driving the country's woeful economy. According to various officials working on the process, the $300 being paid to each demobilized fighter - totaling some $27 million - is breeding corruption among former commanders and fueling resentment among ordinary Liberians.
Officials say ex-commanders are recruiting civilians to pose as former combatants and briefing them on how pass themselves off as unarmed participants in the war. Those who slip through the screening questions posed by UN military observers are then forced to hand over most of the payment to the commanders; those who fail, particularly the women, often get beaten. Others bypass the screening questions by handing in precisely 150 bullets, the minimum to qualify automatically for disarmament.
Every afternoon in Zwedru, commanders flock to the vehicles dropping off their former troops after the four-day demobilization process to extort a share of the payment. It's a sign that faction leaders retain a substantial amount of control more than a year after former President Charles Taylor went into exile and a transitional government was formed, ending the civil war.
"There will always be unscrupulous commanders who try to benefit from the program," says Clive Jachnik, head of disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) for the UN mission in Liberia. Mr. Jachnik says the program does not tolerate fraud and cracks down when it uncovers instances of coercion. But he is also critical of policy decisions made before he joined the mission earlier this year. "The planning could have been more comprehensive," he says. "Arms and cash should not be seen to be linked."
Liberians in the rural areas who didn't take up arms say they resent that the fighters who destroyed their country are being rewarded not only with money but also with preferential access to employment. The US has made it policy that all the projects funded through its $28-million Liberia Community Infrastructure Program must allocate three jobs to ex-combatants for each job that goes to a member of the war-affected community.
"It's like offering me a job because I have done wrong to somebody and not considering the person I have done wrong to," says Jonah Sampson, a manager with Multi Agrisystem Promoters, which is recruiting laborers for a US-funded project to clear more than 2,000 acres of an oil-palm plantation near the eastern town of Zleh.
"Everybody felt the effect of the war," says Mr. Sampson. "Why should the emphasis be on ex-combatants?" He says the ex-fighters have been slow to respond to work offers, but if the $2-a-day jobs were thrown open to the community, every slot would be filled "tomorrow."
During previous failed attempts at demobilization in Liberia, programs aimed only at former combatants "divided communities and caused considerable resentment on the part of civilians who received no special assistance," Oxfam, a British aid agency, warns in a report. An official at the US Embassy in Liberia says the main goal of the US funds are to help the ex-fighters reintegrate: "We are trying to hire as many non-combatants as possible, but the focus is not general employment."
There's a palpable sense of entitlement among many of the ex-combatants. Any day outside the headquarters of the National Commission for DDRR in Monrovia finds dozens of ex-fighters demanding cash for transport, school fees, or food. They defend their preferential treatment. "We are more traumatized than them," argues Prince Neagor, who says he has been a soldier since he was 12. "I was forced to go and fight."
So why aren't more ex-soldiers leaping at the jobs on offer? "The money is too small for them," says Alex Geayea, a former commander with the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, a rebel group.
Moses Jarbo, director of the government's National Commission for DDRR, says countries that go back to war don't do so during the demobilization phase, but afterward, especially if former fighters' expectations aren't met. He says Liberia needs a massive public-works program both to provide jobs and rebuild the country's shattered infrastructure.
Donors pledged $520 million to Liberia in February. Two-thirds of the pledges have come through, but according to Abou Moussa, the UN's chief humanitarian official here, little of the funding available is earmarked for rehabilitation. "I am concerned that if we don't get the money, ex-combatants will start protesting and causing unrest," he says. "We have a fragile peace in Liberia. We don't want to compromise that."
-------- biological weapons
Biological Weapons Pose Major Threat, Say U.K. Scientists
Reuters
By Jeremy Lovell
October 28, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=263
LONDON - Biological weapons that can wipe out whole populations pose one of the biggest threats to the world today, yet remain almost completely uncontrolled, the British Medical Association said this week.
It urged the United States to stop blocking attempts to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) when it comes up for renewal in 2006.
"This technology could be used by sub-state terror groups and eventually by deranged individuals," said Malcolm Dando, author of the BMA's study, "Biological Weapons and Humanity II."
He warned that the development of biological weapons designed to target specific ethnic groups was coming closer to reality and said it was already theoretically possible to recreate devastating viruses like the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that killed 40 million people.
The anthrax attacks in the United States in 2001 and the engineered nerve agent fentanyl used by the Russians to end the Moscow theater siege with disastrous results in 2002 showed that biological weapons already existed, Dando said.
Yet the BTWC, which dates back to 1975, contains no means of monitoring and no powers of enforcement.
"The best way of describing it is as a gentleman's agreement," said Dando, who is head of peace studies at Bradford University.
He said there were strong international mechanisms controlling nuclear and chemical weapons, but virtually nothing to control what he termed the "riotous development" of biotechnology.
Dando said the United States, which under President George W. Bush had turned its back on many international accords, was the key reason the BTWC treaty remained weak after 19 years.
The U.S.'s powerful biotechnology industry has put pressure on the administration not to sign up to international rules, fearing they could stifle research, he said.
But Dando noted that Bush's opponent in next week's presidential elections, Sen. John Kerry, had made positive comments about strengthening the treaty.
Russia, which was known to have developed a major biological weapons capability in the closing stages of the Cold War, had also kept a very low profile on the issue, he said.
"There are still several of its military laboratories that have not been opened up for inspection. You have to wonder why," he said.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA, said it was vital scientists got involved in self-regulation to try to ensure experiments and information were not misused.
"The real key to biosecurity, to not having to deal with deliberately spread epidemics, is to make sure that these materials are not produced," she said. "You can never provide 100 percent security but you can create safeguards."
Too lax controls and Armageddon could be round the corner, but too rigid regulation and vital advances on health sciences could be stifled.
What was needed was a code of ethics covering scientists and governments and sensible international laws fully enforced.
"If we don't do the prevention side, we have to be prepared for those weapons to be used," Nathanson said.
-------- britain
British troops move closer to Baghdad
October 28, 2004
From combined dispatches
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041027-095716-2744r.htm
BAGHDAD - British troops and armor rolled north from Basra yesterday to take over a deadly area near Baghdad and free up U.S. troops for a widely expected attack on the Iraqi rebel-held city of Fallujah.
A column with Warrior armored vehicles on flatbed trucks took to the road, a Reuters news agency photographer said. The Warriors were fitted with an extra slat of armor to deflect rocket-propelled grenades - a weapon of choice for guerrillas in Iraq.
"The deployment has begun," said a British Defense Ministry spokesman. "For operational reasons I can give no further details. But they will be back for Christmas."
About 850 British troops, mainly from the Black Watch regiment, are deploying in a restive region just south of Baghdad, allowing U.S. troops to reinforce units fighting guerrillas in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah and elsewhere.
U.S. forces would spearhead any assault on Fallujah, which Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government has vowed to retake as part of a drive to pacify the country before national assembly elections planned for January.
As the redeployment took place, Al Jazeera television broadcast video of a kidnapped aid worker making another plea for her life.
The tape showed a distraught Margaret Hassan, the 59-year-old head of CARE International in Iraq, blinking back tears as she spoke.
"Please don't bring the [British] soldiers to Baghdad. Take them away. Please, on top of that, please release the women prisoners," she said. Mrs. Hassan has joint Irish, British and Iraqi citizenship.
It was the third video released since Mrs. Hassan was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad a week ago.
In the latest video, Mrs. Hassan also called on CARE International to close its offices in Iraq. The organization has suspended its activities since her Oct. 19 abduction.
No group has taken responsibility for her abduction. But followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi had made the same demand for the release of female prisoners in the abduction of two Americans and a Briton last month. All three were beheaded.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to agree to the U.S. request for redeployment is politically sensitive for the British leader, whose popularity has plummeted because of his support for the Iraq war.
Britain's 8,500 troops are based around the southern city of Basra in a relatively peaceful area of Iraq. Sixty-eight British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, compared with more than 1,000 U.S. troops.
British lawmakers have opposed moving the troops into U.S.-controlled areas, saying it would place them in more danger.
Elsewhere, a motorcycle bomber attacked a U.S. convoy in central Iraq, killing one American soldier and wounding another.
Also, one person was killed and three were wounded when a bomb exploded near their vehicle yesterday morning on the road to Baghdad's airport, a U.S. official said. The victims' nationalities were not available.
U.S. forces have been increasing raids in Sunni insurgent areas to the north, south and west of the capital in recent months in a bid to stabilize Iraq ahead of national elections in January. The U.S. military said yesterday that Iraqi forces, backed by Marines, captured 18 insurgents in a sweep through the central town of Haswah.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Blair repeated his pledge that the Black Watch contingent would be home in Scotland by Christmas. However, he didn't rule out further British deployments in the area.
-------- china
Powell's Comments in China Rile Taiwan
In Apparently Unintended Remarks, Secretary Says Island Is Not Independent
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 28, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1564-2004Oct27.html
BEIJING, Oct. 27 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent less than 24 hours in China this week, but that was enough to stir up a diplomatic tempest with some unorthodox and apparently unintended remarks about U.S. policy on Taiwan.
The fuss demonstrated anew the high level of tension across the Taiwan Strait and the strained formulas that China and Taiwan use to argue about their long standoff. But statements by Powell also drew attention to an expanding gap between U.S. policy, which has not changed in a quarter-century, and Taiwan's steadily evolving idea of itself as an independent country determined not to be swallowed up by China.
Powell, in a pair of television interviews Monday in Beijing, said the United States holds that there is only one China and that Taiwan is not an independent nation. He went on to suggest that the Taiwanese and the Americans, in addition to the Chinese, are seeking to bring about the island's reunification with the mainland.
The comments, broadcast by CNN and the Hong Kong-based Phoenix news channel, veered noticeably from the standard formulations of U.S. policy, which were worked out in three U.S.-Chinese communiques issued after President Richard M. Nixon resumed contacts with China in 1972.
In the communiques, the United States recognized that the Beijing government maintains there is only one China and that it includes Taiwan, but did not explicitly adopt that as the U.S. view. Standard U.S. policy since then has been to urge a peaceful outcome "acceptable to people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," without defining what the outcome would be.
Alarmed, Taiwan's leaders immediately accused Powell of springing an unfair surprise with a major policy shift in one of the world's most volatile areas, and reaffirmed their passionate insistence that the island is independent -- in fact, if not in law.
"Other countries, with or without formal diplomatic relations with us, cannot affect or deny the current situation and the fact that the Republic of China, or Taiwan, is a sovereign, independent country," President Chen Shui-bian told reporters in Taipei on Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Mark Chen more directly told the Taiwanese parliament that Powell's remarks "left a deep impression on Taiwan," according to news agency reports from the Taiwanese capital. "They have said they didn't want any surprises from us, but they gave us a big surprise," he added, referring to the United States.
Foreign Minister Chen sought an explanation Wednesday in a meeting with Douglas Paal, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei. Protesters, meanwhile, gathered outside the institute's building to denounce Powell's comments.
Chinese officials, who regard Taiwan as a province that must be reintegrated into the mainland at any price -- including war -- reacted positively. Powell's comments, made after a morning of meetings with senior Chinese leaders, closely matched their own views.
"Some people have said Powell made a slip of the tongue, but I don't believe it," Zhang Mingqing, spokesman for the government's Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a briefing Wednesday.
Some analysts suggested Powell's comments might have indicated dissatisfaction with Chen's government, whose officials last month issued a series of bellicose statements unwelcome in Washington. The Bush administration, absorbed by the war in Iraq and the election campaign, has tried to keep tensions down across the Taiwan Strait.
But U.S. officials were quoted as saying Powell had just used the wrong language. The State Department, without directly disavowing its boss, issued a clarification that said the United States' "one-China policy" had not changed. The U.S. government regards Beijing "as the full legal government of China and acknowledges China's position that there is one China and that Taiwan is part of China," a statement said.
The final outcome, the statement continued, should be reached without force and be "acceptable to people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait." There was no mention of Powell's suggestion that the outcome would be "a reunification that all parties are seeking."
Chen Shui-bian's government, which entered a second four-year term in May, is not seeking reunification; he was reelected on a hard-edged independence platform. Judging by opinion polls and election results, a majority of the island's 23 million inhabitants agree with him.
But when U.S. policy was worked out in the joint communiques with China, Taiwan's Nationalist Party was still in charge, having run the island since fleeing China after its defeat by Mao Zedong's Communist troops in 1949. For the Nationalists, one China was not a problem -- they just felt they should be running it.
Since then, the Nationalist Party has become a minority in a democratic Taiwan and, even among Nationalist partisans, the idea of reuniting with Communist-run China has lost much of its appeal. Officials for President Chen's Democratic Progressive Party have proposed that the solution might be a loose association along the lines of the British Commonwealth.
Mark Chen, Taiwan's foreign minister, suggested in a recent interview that, given these changes in Taiwan, the United States should consider updating its one-China policy. A senior presidential adviser, Koo Kwang-ming, three weeks ago took out full-page advertisements in several U.S. and Taiwanese newspapers, including The Washington Post, urging the idea on the Bush administration.
--------
The Chinese Dragon submerges
Asia Times
Oct 28, 2004
By Phar Kim Beng
http://atimes.com/atimes/China/FJ28Ad04.html
TOKYO - Over the past decade China has been expanding and enhancing its maritime forces to make them blue-water capable. A major focus is submarines, the Chinese Dragon U-boat. An obvious inference is the use of subs in the narrow, shallow Taiwan Strait in a possible conflict with "renegade" Taiwan, but military analysts say submarines are virtually obsolete and would easily be killed by ships and planes in the strait.
Still, the submarine, that sleek high-tech military platform, is an important symbol of prestige for both China and Taiwan, where the Legislative Yuan is battling over the military budget. Both Beijing and Taiwan are acquiring the vessels, despite what may be the futility of their deployment in a conflict.
A Chinese appraisal of future naval warfare in 2001, translated by the Foreign Broadcasting International Service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), concludes that "the prospect for using submarines is good, because of their covertness and power. Submarines are menaces existing anywhere, at any time." In the same report, another Chinese analyst affirmed that "submarines are the maritime weapons posing the greatest threat to an aircraft carrier formation. Submarines are also our navy's core force."
According to US and Taiwan intelligence estimates, China has about 70 submarines (virtually all conventional), it is building more and buying more from Russia. It has one nuclear submarine, two more being built and eight Kilo-class diesels on order from Russia, to be delivered in 2005 (Russian sources) or 2007 (Chinese sources). David Shambaugh, a leading military analyst at George Washington University, confirms at least 70 submarines, basing his figure on the authoritative International Institute for Strategic Studies on military balance for his article in the Washington Quarterly in 2002.
According to Sid Trevethan, an Alaska-based specialist on the Chinese military, Beijing has deployed 57 submarines, including one Xia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, five Han-class sub, four Kilo-class subs, seven Songs, 18 Mings, and and 22 Soviet-designed Romeos.
Writing in the Spring 2004 issue of the journal International Security, Lyle Goldstein and William Murray affirmed: "Contrary to Western forecasts, China's confidence in imported Kilos has not halted domestic production of the new Song-class diesel submarine. In addition, China's nuclear propulsion program will soon field the first of its second-generation vessels, which will include both attack submarines and strategic missile boats. Finally, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is undertaking an overhaul of the submarine force's weaponry, training, recruitment, and doctrine."
The conservative Washington Times reported in July that to the surprise of US observers, China had built new Yuan-class diesel submarines that combine Russian technology and Chinese engineering.
Indeed, China is only in the middle of extending the size and range of its submarine fleet, while acquiring modern weapons to transform its fleet from a coastal defense navy to a force capable of sustained open-ocean operations.
These developments have increased the security concerns of Japan, Taiwan and the United States.
After all, even if China took at least two decades to achieve open-ocean operations, Beijing has the option to develop some midget submarines that would tap into underwater communication lines or get up close to a coastline to land its special forces.
"It is always a threat," said William Taylor, a retired Army colonel who was director of national-security studies at the US Military Academy. In a study on Chinese submarines, co-authored with Lyle Goldstein in the Spring 2004 issue of International Security, he said, "The subs can put special operations teams in place, they can target aircraft carriers, locate other targets, and with the Chinese nuclear [weapons] capability, there are different threat categories altogether."
Nor is there a limit to what China wants to achieve with its submarine forces. In addition to its one nuclear-powered submarine, which has been ridden with troubles that confine it to the port, China is building two new U-boats.
China's Type-093 sub is believed to be based on the Russian Victor-III class, while the Pentagon believes that its Type-094 attack submarine with a finished hull will be ready for deployment in 2005.
Regardless of type or form, however, most military analysts agree that Chinese submarines could create serious trouble during a regional conflict, either by menacing sea lanes or by forcing US aircraft carriers to stay further away from targets for fear of being torpedoed.
In this context, the US, Taiwan and Japan have begun to take China's submarine forces seriously, especially given Beijing's option to ally its maritime efforts with North Korea, another country with a massive, though archaic, and still deadly submarine fleet mostly inherited from World War II.
A Pentagon report published in May stated that China is changing from a coastal defense force to one employing "active offshore defense".
"This change in operations requires newer, more modern warships and submarines capable of operating at greater distances from China's coast for longer periods," the report said, noting that submarine construction is a top priority.
Indeed, over the last two months, the US Navy has begun conducting tests in the Sea of Japan, as well as similar trials off Hawaii, to test the prototype of a detection device that analyzes submarines' underwater color patterns and detects color gradations too faint for the human eye to detect. Early versions of the device called the Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral, or LASH, have spotted whales and submarines below the surface. Current detection methods used by the US Navy rely on sonar and other methods to "hear" the location of enemy submarines. The LASH system is designed to permit the Navy to "see" the submarines.
Japan is wary of China's efforts and has fully supported such detection exercises, since Chinese submarines have been spotted off the coast of Japan with increased frequency. Indeed, China has even begun to conduct resource surveys in the vicinity of Okino-Torishima, 1,700 kilometers south of Tokyo.
The Chinese survey activities have been undertaken within Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in violation of the Law of the Sea, according to the Maritime Safety Agency of Japan. China, however, has insisted that Okino-Torishima should not be considered an island, but a cluster of rocks not qualified for EEZ status, as stipulated by the Law of the Sea.
While these submarines, Tokyo military experts believe, do not have any offensive intention in the immediate or short term, they are nonetheless positioned to increase China's intelligence-gathering activities and to explore the opportunity to block US naval forces in the event of a Taiwan conflict. China has the nasty habit of surfacing its submarine fleets off the coast of the Sea of Japan, as in November 2003, 25 miles offshore.
Taiwan also is taking the Chinese submarine threat seriously. Taiwan is severely disadvantaged, although the Taiwan Strait is narrow and relatively shallow because of the continental shelf, making it difficult for submarines to operate and hide.
According to Shambaugh, the China military analyst, Taiwan's two antiquated World War II-vintage (Guppy class), and two Dutch-built Zvaardis diesel submarines are no match for China's 70 submarines, were a conflict to break out.
Indeed, Taiwan's airborne anti-submarine warfare capability also remains limited, this despite the fact that the shallow Taiwan Strait actually gives Taiwan the military advantage.Taiwan is taking steps to strengthen its submarine forces accordingly. To begin with, the Taiwan navy has signed a submarine-rescue agreement with the US. According to Chinese-language news reports, the agreement states that the US is required to send a deep submergence rescue vehicle (DSRV) to Taiwan in the shortest time possible if any of Taiwan's four submarines become disabled.
That China is improving its submarine and naval capability has clearly made Taiwan wary. In October 2003, the Taiwan parliament was informed that a Chinese destroyer from the North Sea fleet had, for the first time, sailed through the waters east of Taiwan to join exercises in the South China Sea. "This has never happened before," said Defense Minister Tang Yao-Ming. President Chen Shui-bian repeatedly has urged Taiwan to improve its naval combat readiness.
Chen did not go into details about Taiwan's own naval buildup, but its highlights include the purchase of four US second-hand Kidd-class destroyers and eight conventional submarines. US President George W Bush in April 2001 approved the sale of eight diesel-electric submarines as part of Washington's most comprehensive arms package to Taipei since 1992.
The multibillion-dollar arms package, including submarines, has generated a fierce debate in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, or parliament.
Although the chances are slim that China and Taiwan would return to the heyday of Cold War submarine warfare, when submarines pursued one another under the sea, the exponential expansion of Chinese submarine forces clearly has not been taken lightly.
Phar Kim Beng is a regular contributor to Asia Times Online. He is currently on a Sumitomo Foundation fellowship, where he is studying the state of Japanese social sciences. He was trained in international relations and strategic studies, first at Cambridge University, later the Fletcher School and Harvard University.
-------- iraq
Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War
October 28, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-deaths.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there were 100,000 ``excess deaths'' in 18 months.
The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.
``Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq,'' said Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.
``The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children,'' Roberts told Reuters.
The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which the Iraq war has been a major issue.
Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers described what they found as shocking.
The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.
Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370.or attacks and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting, according to the Pentagon.
VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.
``What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it,'' Roberts said.
Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was ``very bad for Iraqi civilians.''
``We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians populations,'' he told Reuters in an interview.
The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each, recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.
They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.
Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.
Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.
``Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes,'' Roberts added in the study.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving security situation in Iraq.
``But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq -- in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre-emptive war,'' Horton said in an editorial.
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Militants Slaughter 11 Iraqi Soldiers
October 28, 2004
By MARIAM FAM
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents slaughtered 11 Iraqi soldiers, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style, and declared on an Islamic militant Web site Thursday that Iraqi fighters will avenge "the blood" of women and children killed in U.S. strikes on the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah.
The wave of foreigner kidnappings claimed another victim - a Polish woman in her 60s who is married to an Iraqi. Her captors demanded that Poland withdraw its 2,400 soldiers and that the U.S.-led coalition free all Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison.
The killing of the 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen was claimed by the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which posted a videotape of their brutal deaths on its Web site Thursday along with a warning for all Iraqi police and soldiers to desert or face death. The militants said earlier the soldiers were abducted this week on the road between Baghdad and Hillah, 60 miles to the south.
After forcing each of the soldiers to state his name and unit, the militants forced one of them to the ground and sawed off his head. The others were forced to kneel with their hands bound as a gunman fired shots into the back of their heads.
A voice on the videotape warned all Iraqi soldiers and police to "repent to God, abandon your weapons, go home and beware of supporting the apostate Crusaders or their followers, the Iraqi government, or else you will only find death."
"We will not forget the blood of our elderly, our women and our children that is shed daily in Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi and elsewhere," a statement on the Web site said.
The al-Sunnah movement has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and hostage takings, including the slaying of 12 Nepalese hostages in August.
Elsewhere, two more American soldiers were killed - one in a car bombing in Baghdad and the other in an ambush near Balad, 40 miles north of the capital. At least 1,109 U.S. service members have died since President Bush launched the Iraq war in March 2003.
In Tokyo, Japanese authorities said they had failed to enlist the help of a prominent Iraqi cleric in trying to free a 24-year-old Japanese hostage.
An al-Qaida affiliate led by Jordanian terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened Tuesday to behead Shosei Koda in 48 hours unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq - a demand rejected by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The video of the Polish hostage, aired on Al-Jazeera television, showed a middle-aged woman with gray hair wearing a polka-dotted blouse sitting in front of two masked gunmen, one of whom was pointing a pistol at her head.
The woman was identified as Teresa Borcz-Kalifa by one of her former superiors at the Polish Embassy in Baghdad, where she worked in the 1990s. Leszek Adamiec told Poland's private Radio Zet that Borcz-Kalifa worked in the consular section until 1994.
Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the woman, a longtime resident with Iraqi citizenship, was believed to have been abducted Wednesday night from her home in Baghdad. In Warsaw, Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said she was a Polish citizen who is married to an Iraqi.
She was the ninth foreign woman abducted in Iraq since a wave of kidnappings began last spring. By comparison, Iraqi officials say that at least 152 Iraqis have been kidnapped this month - the highest monthly total since the occupation began last year.
Her abduction was claimed by the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades.
Her voice was not audible on the tape, but Al-Jazeera said she urged Polish troops to leave the country and for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to release all female detainees from Abu Ghraib. The kidnappers did not mention a specific death threat or give a deadline.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski said Poland would not surrender "to the dictate of terrorists" by meeting the demands. Poland commands some 6,000 troops from 15 nations - including some 2,400 from Poland - in the Babil, Karbala and Wasit provinces south of Baghdad.
All but two foreign women hostages have been released, and in a statement issued Thursday in London, CARE International appealed for the release of Margaret Hassan, a British-Irish-Iraqi citizen who has headed the humanitarian organization's operations in Iraq since 1991.
"CARE has closed down all operations in Iraq," the statement said in English and Arabic. "Please release Mrs. Hassan to her family and friends in Iraq."
No group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping Hassan, but on a video aired Wednesday night she was seen pleading for the withdrawal of British troops and the release of Iraq women prisoners.
Several groups of hostage-takers have demanded the release of women prisoners in Iraq, including al-Zarqawi's group. Two Americans and a Briton were beheaded last month after coalition forces refused the demand.
Meanwhile, the first wave of 75 British soldiers set up camp Thursday at their new base at an undisclosed location some 30 miles south of Baghdad, part of some 800 British troops moving closer to the capital to bolster U.S. forces. Black Watch soldiers redeployed from the southern city of Basra were told they will be pulled out of Iraq in early December, the British news agency Press Association reported.
U.S. and Iraqi forces are gearing up for a possible assault on Fallujah and other militant strongholds west of Baghdad if community leaders do not hand over foreign fighters and extremists, including al-Zarqawi and his followers.
On Thursday, U.S. aircraft bombed a suspected insurgent safe house in Fallujah, killing two people, hospital officials said. The overnight strike in the northern part of the city targeted a "meeting site" used by suspected al-Zarqawi allies, the U.S. military said in a statement.
Insurgents also clashed with U.S. forces in Ramadi, 25 miles west of Fallujah and another militant stronghold. Two people were killed and four wounded, hospital officials said.
--------
Fallujah Talks, and Battle Planning, Continue
U.S. Convoy Moves Toward Insurgent-Held City as British Forces Shift North
By Jackie Spinner and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 28, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3806-2004Oct27.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- Local leaders in the insurgent-held city of Fallujah said Wednesday that they were continuing to negotiate with Iraq's interim government on a possible handover of the city to Iraqi troops, but townspeople reported that insurgents and foreign military forces appeared to be preparing for battle.
A U.S. military convoy of at least 40 armored vehicles was seen moving toward Fallujah, while British troops in southern Iraq headed north to plug any gaps that an offensive on the city might create. At the same time, members of the Shura Council of Mujaheddin, which governs Fallujah, told residents who had not already fled the city to leave before what they described as "the last big battle" with U.S.-led forces.
"I told them I can't because I don't have the money or place to go," said Talal Abed, 57, a Fallujah municipal employee. "They insisted."
Abed said a council member gave him the equivalent of about $35 to rent a room or house outside the city. "They also stopped a taxi for me to take my family and leave today," he said.
The continuing talks between the shura council and the Iraqi government are aimed at avoiding a full-scale assault on the city, which insurgents have controlled since April. U.S. warplanes have been staging airstrikes in Fallujah for weeks, pounding targets reportedly linked to the network of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian guerrilla. The U.S. government has accused Zarqawi and his loyalists of engineering many of the deadliest attacks in Iraq in recent months and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture or death.
Earlier this month, local insurgent leaders voted overwhelmingly to accept broad conditions set by the Iraqi government, including demands that they eject foreign fighters from the city, turn over all heavy weapons, dismantle illegal checkpoints and allow the Iraqi National Guard to enter the city. In turn, the insurgents set their own conditions, which included a halt to U.S. attacks on the city and acknowledgment by the military that women and children have been among the casualties in U.S. strikes.
Ibrahim Jafari, one of Iraq's two vice presidents, said Wednesday that "negotiations continue, and we hope to find a peaceful solution. If not, the government will have no choice but to deal with it by the military option."
Jafari said the main impediment to a negotiated settlement remains the presence of foreign guerrillas, who refuse to stop fighting despite the stated desire of many local insurgents to make a deal with the Baghdad government and prepare for elections promised for January.
"The most dangerous thing in Fallujah is the existence of foreign fighters," Jafari said in an interview. "This wasn't so in Najaf. It makes the people in Fallujah less unified, which makes the military option more likely to be necessary. We don't hope to use the military option, but the political calculation is not in our hands."
The British government agreed last week to shift more than 800 troops from southern Iraq to areas near Baghdad, which would free U.S. forces in and around the capital to move on insurgent-held areas. Britain has 8,500 troops in Iraq, most of them around the southern city of Basra.
In other developments, a U.S. soldier was killed Wednesday in a suicide attack in central Iraq that also wounded another soldier, the military said in a statement. The name of the slain soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin.
In Baghdad, a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official who once served as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates was killed in what may have been a botched kidnapping attempt, the Associated Press reported.
Qusai Mahdi Saleh was driving to his home in northern Baghdad when four men stopped his car and tried to force him from the vehicle, said Labeed M. Abbawi, the deputy foreign minister.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, gunmen killed a senior Iraqi politician, the Reuters news agency reported. Mohammad Ayash, head of the Iraqi National Congress in western Iraq, was killed Tuesday as he left his home, said Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for the party. "They know who to kill. Mohammad was widely respected for a family history of opposition to Saddam Hussein. He was from Fallujah and well connected there," Qanbar said.
An Iraqi television anchorwoman, Leqaa Abdul Razzaq, was killed by gunmen Wednesday as she traveled by taxi to her home in southeastern Baghdad, said an official at al-Sharqiyah television where she worked.
Abdul Razzaq had worked for the U.S.-funded al-Iraqiya television network until about a month ago. Her husband was murdered about two months ago, Salah Askary, a news director at the station, told the Associated Press.
In the city of Khalis, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, three Iraqi civilians were wounded Wednesday when a car bomb exploded near a convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles, which are widely used by foreign contractors.
The al-Jazeera satellite television network aired a videotaped plea by a kidnapped British aid worker Wednesday, urging Britain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Margaret Hassan, 59, who was abducted Oct. 19, also pleaded for the release of women prisoners held by U.S.-led forces.
The U.S. military said a weapons buyback program in Baghdad's volatile Sadr City slum ended with mixed results. The program, which ran from Oct. 13 to Oct. 22, collected thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, antitank mines, rocket-propelled grenade launders and other arms, the military said in a statement. The military did not report the value of cash vouchers given out in exchange for the weapons.
Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
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INSURGENTS
Provincial Capital Near Falluja Is Rapidly Slipping Into Chaos
October 28, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28ramadi.html?pagewanted=all
RAMADI, Iraq, Oct. 21 -The American military and the interim Iraqi government are quickly losing control of this provincial capital, which is larger and strategically more important than its sister city of Falluja, say local officials, clerics, tribal sheiks and officers with the United States Marines.
"The city is chaotic," said Sheik Ali al-Dulaimi, a leader of the region's largest tribe. "There's no presence of the Allawi government," he added, speaking of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
While Ramadi is not exactly a "no go" zone for the marines, like the insurgent stronghold of Falluja 30 miles to the east, officers say it is fast slipping in that direction. In the last six weeks, guerrillas have stepped up the pace of assassinations of Iraqis working with the Americans, and marine officials say they suspect Iraqi security officers have been helping insurgents to attack their troops. Reconstruction efforts have ground to a halt because no local contractors are willing to work.
Most of the military's resources are channeled into controlling a bomb-infested, four-and-a-half-mile stretch of road that runs through downtown and connects two bases. Insurgents pop out of alleyways, mosques and a crowded market and fire at marines at will, then disappear when the Americans give chase.
Ramadi lies at the heart of rebellious Anbar Province and astride the major western supply route to Baghdad. The city, whose 400,000 residents have at best merely tolerated the foreign military presence, is seen as a crucial part of American efforts to plant a secular democracy in Iraq. But the disintegration of authority puts in jeopardy both the Bush administration's plan to stage nationwide elections by Jan. 31 and any sense of legitimacy such elections might have. It also complicates the American military's plans to invade Falluja, because of the close coordination between insurgents in the two cities.
With a powerful mix of propaganda and intimidation, well-financed guerrillas have turned the people of Ramadi against the American occupiers and their allies, Iraqis and marines here say.
"The provincial government is on the verge of collapse," said Second Lt. Ryan Schranel, whose platoon does 24-hour guard duty at the besieged government center opposite the main bazaar. "Just about everybody has resigned or is on the verge of resigning."
The provincial governor, Muhammad Awad, who doubles as the city's mayor, took office after the previous governor resigned in early August following the kidnapping of his three sons, and after a deputy governor was kidnapped and killed. Mr. Awad is juggling two jobs because no one has come forward to be mayor.
Compounding the problems, guerrillas have been streaming in since the marines stepped up airstrikes against the mujahedeen in Falluja, Marine officials say.
"We hit the deck one and a half months ago, and the area has changed for the downhill very quickly," said Staff Sgt. James Keefer, one of six civil affairs officers attached to the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, which arrived here in early September. "We used to go to civilian areas in one or two Humvees to look at hospitals and other places. Now it's too dangerous, and we need four Humvees for a convoy, and we don't have the resources."
The power vacuum here also muddies plans for an invasion of Falluja, which has about 300,000 people, because Ramadi could well become a haven for retreating guerrillas. Marines here say they have found it impossible to seal off either the highway or the desert smuggling routes between the two cities. Indeed, Marine officials say there is a high level of coordination between insurgent groups in the two cities, with the suspected guerrilla leader in Ramadi, Muhammad Daham, working closely with counterparts in Falluja.
When the marines made their ill-fated push into Falluja last April, they had to battle a ferocious uprising in Ramadi, where 12 marines were killed in a single ambush.
Though members of the former ruling Baath Party are believed to be financing the insurgency here, where loyalty to Saddam Hussein ran high, there is a growing Islamist face to the rebellion, similar to Falluja, local officials and Marine officers say. Calls for resistance emanate from mosque loudspeakers when Marine convoys roll past. In a coordinated raid on seven mosques on Oct. 12, marines said, they found large weapons caches, taped anti-American sermons and DVD's showing beheadings.
Top Marine commanders say they may open an offensive in Ramadi together with one in Falluja. But such an assault would probably have only a limited effect, because insurgents here do not hold well-defined territory, as they do in Falluja. They have instead blended into the population and conduct hit-and-run strikes on Marine patrols and outposts along the main downtown strip.
"It's difficult to describe 'sense of control' in terms of insurgent activity," said Capt. Eric Dougherty, the commander of Company E, which lost four men in the first six weeks here. "The insurgent activity is everywhere. It's at our firm bases here. It's among women and children, those cowards."
Dozens of government employees still come to work every day at the provincial center, a three-story building pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel. Marines sitting watch behind sandbags on the roof get shot at regularly with AK-47's, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
"We're one of the only units that's got bases inside the city," said Lt. Col. Randall P. Newman, the battalion commander. "This is not Falluja. We want to keep this place from becoming a Falluja."
In an interview in his office, Governor Awad attributed the anarchy to the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi security forces and the limited presence of the marines, whom he said had wasted time earlier on reconstruction projects.
"The performance of the police and national guard is very weak in all of central Iraq," Mr. Awad said as he sat behind his desk, two Iraqi guards in civilian clothes hovering near him. "The marines are not protecting us. It's true that they've helped us with some projects such as improving the water supply and sewage disposal and rebuilding schools. But people think all that is worthless. They need security."
None of the dozens of marines interviewed in Ramadi disagreed with Mr. Awad's assessment of the Iraqi police and National Guard.
Even worse, they say, the local forces sometimes aid the insurgency. Marines arrested the police chief of Anbar Province in August on charges of corruption, and Lieutenant Schranel said Iraqi National Guardsmen were suspected of helping insurgents blow up a veterans' building that marines were using as an observation post.
Colonel Newman said the only effective Iraqi troops in Ramadi are 80 or so Iraqi Special Forces soldiers from elsewhere in the country. They live at battalion headquarters and are used for specific operations like mosque raids, not day-to-day security.
On a recent afternoon, two Iraqi National Guardsmen at a checkpoint at the government center watched as a group of marines walked up. "Here come the sons of dogs," one guardsman said to an Iraqi reporter.
Next door, in police headquarters, Iraqi officers tossed around conspiracy theories.
"The Americans gave us nothing more than AK-47's so they could stay in Iraq for a long time," Lt. Abdul-Latif Salim said. "The resistance has the right to fight the occupation. It's an obligation for every Muslim. The Allawi government has no power."
Insurgents have tried discrediting the marines and the local government through widespread propaganda. Clerics regularly preach against the occupation, while guerrillas post the names of Iraqi security officers outside mosques. A marine showed a flier seized from a mosque that depicted a woman in a black robe being raped by men in sunglasses, presumably Americans.
In late September, insurgents began blowing up whole buildings downtown, videotaping the demolitions and giving the tapes to Arab television networks to attribute blame to American airstrikes, Marine officers said. The explosions have destroyed an agricultural center, a veterans' building and the Red Crescent headquarters. Their wrecked facades still scar the city.
As in other parts of Iraq, guerrillas are killing locals working with Americans. An interpreter at a base called Combat Outpost, east of downtown, was found beheaded recently. Insurgents even killed the man who cleaned the portable toilets at the base.
Sergeant Keefer said the marines tried calling a list of 100 potential local contractors when they first arrived. Many of the phone numbers had been disconnected, and people who did answer said the contractors had left town. Reconstruction "is pretty much at a standstill right now," said Capt. Sean Kuehl, an intelligence officer. "An insurgency cannot be defeated solely by an occupying power. We need the support of the local population."
Abdul Razzaq al-Saeidy contributed reporting for this article.
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Rumsfeld 'ignored Fallujah warnings'
26 October 2004
independent.co.uk
By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=576042
Warnings by the US military commander of last April's operation in Fallujah on the consequences of attacking the city were ignored by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and not passed to President George Bush, an American newspaper has claimed.
After weeks of fighting, and with 600 Iraqis dead, not only did the assault fail, leaving Fallujah in the hands of the rebels, but it also triggered the bloody insurgency still sweeping Iraq. The city has now become the headquarters of Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab Zarqawi whose fighters have mounted relentless attacks, the latest of which claimed the lives of 49 Iraqi army recruits.
Yesterday US forces continue to mass around Fallujah in preparation for another attack, and British troops set off from Basra today, amid bitter controversy back home, to help in the operation to storm the city.
The April attack by the US followed the lynching of four American security guards in Fallujah, when their burnt and mutilated bodies were strung up over a bridge. The White House, and Paul Bremer, then the US administrator of Iraq, wanted to punish the attackers and this is what Mr Rumsfeld and General John P Abizaid, the head of the US forces in the Middle East, promised to deliver.
President Bush declared: "Our military commanders will do whatever necessary to secure Fallujah." Mr Bremer promised the "human jackals" responsible for the guards' deaths" will not go unpunished".
But the man given the assignment, Lieutenant General James T Conway, of the US Marines, strongly urged against the immediate military option. He said later: "We felt we ought to let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge." He also stressed that premature action would destroy the relationship he and his men had been trying to build with the people of Fallujah through reconstruction projects.
But, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times has discovered, Mr Rumsfeld and his advisors did not agree and General Conway's views failed to make it to the White House. But a Pentagon spokesman said it was proper that the dispute was settled at a lower level.
Having ignored the civilian casualties which would inevitably result from such a huge military operation, the US government also appeared to be oblivious to the likely international consequences around the world of women and children being killed.
As the attack intensified, members of the Iraqi Governing Council threatened to resign, and the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and even Tony Blair urged an end to the offensive.
Four days later, with the city only half-taken, the marines were told to halt, then pull out. Before doing so, they hurriedly assembled a local force, the Fallujah Brigade, to take over. Most of those who enlisted turned out to be insurgents, and it took five months to disband the brigade which, by then, had brought many other fellow militants into the city.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinians Debate Significance of Israel's Gaza Withdrawal
October 28, 2004
The New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER and GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28mideast.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Oct. 27 - A day after the Israeli Parliament voted to dismantle all its settlements in Gaza, Palestinians reacted Wednesday with amb