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NUCLEAR
Thousands demonstrate nuclear waste shipment to German dump
China backs Iran amid 'difficult' nuclear talks with EU
China Seeks to Avoid Iran Nuclear Issue
Iran and Europe Locked in Nuclear Talks
APNewsBreak: Traces of plutonium found at Egyptian nuclear facility
U.S. Wins Washington Nuke Sludge Ruling
MILITARY
Sudan Peace Talks Stall Over the Issue of Flights Over Darfur
AU condemns Ivory Coast air raids
U.S. Expands List of Lost Missiles
US triples global estimate of shoulder fired missiles
Banzai! Debunking the kamikaze myth
Ethnic Rivalries Still Bitter in Balkans
China: Damage Control After Criticizing Bush
EU, India eye counterterrorism
Fallujah and Those Mass Graves
'It's nothing personal. We don't want you here'
Fallujah pounded ahead of assault
Battle Near, Iraqi Sunnis Make Offer
Iraqi Rules for Candidacy Spur Some U.S. Concern
Annan's Warning On Fallujah Dismissed
All Sides Prepare for American Attack on Falluja
Five Palestinians Killed by Israeli Troops
Arafat on brink sparks burial debate
With Arafat in Coma, Near Death, Conflict Mounts Over Burial Site
U.S. tightens military alliance
US ready to put weapons in space
U.S. Air Force launches a GPS satellite
C.I.A. Is Said to Choose a No. 3
Russian Jury Convicts Scientist in His Retrial
Abolish the CIA!
Annan protests Fallujah strategy
2 GIs defend their killing of wounded Iraqi
National Guard Agrees to Halt Exercises After Strafing School
Veteran Wins His Discharge After Taking Army to Court
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Chile's Army Accepts Blame for Rights Abuses in the Pinochet Era
Beheadings on the Rise Around the World
POLITICS
Group seeks Schwarzenegger's records
Bush Adviser On Iraq Policy To Step Down
Bush Will Not Seek Mass Resignations
Glitch Found in Ohio Counting
OTHER
Putin Ratifies Kyoto Protocol on Emissions
Montreal Hospitals Hit by Deadly Epidemic
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- europe
Thousands demonstrate nuclear waste shipment to German dump
(AFP)
Nov 06, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041106160057.hjgq3ook.html
DANNEBERG, Germany - Thousands of anti-nuclear protestors gathered in northern Germany on Saturday to protest at the imminent arrival of a shipment of highly radioactive waste from France to a German storage dump.
The estimated 5,500 protestors gathered as a train carrying 12 containers of nuclear waste prepared to leave the La Hague nuclear plant in northern France later on Saturday, at about 8:00 pm (1900 GMT).
It was expected to cross the French-German border on Sunday and to reach the German town of Dannenberg 24 hours later, where the waste is expected to be loaded on to trucks to cover the last few kilometres to the Gorleben dump.
After demonstrating in Danneberg market square on Saturday, demonstrators gathered at the railway station, temporarily blocking the tracks to be used by the train.
More than 12,000 police were deployed last year for similar convoys in one of the largest security operations of its kind ever mounted in Germany.
Anti-nuclear and environmental campaigners say the shipments are dangerous and that the waste will contaminate the water table at Gorleben.
Germany, which has no treatment facilities of its own, sends spent fuel rods for reprocessing at the La Hague plant before they are returned here for storage.
-------- iran
China backs Iran amid 'difficult' nuclear talks with EU
TEHRAN (AFP)
Nov 06, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041106221302.ctwsndxt.html
China gave Iran crucial backing on Saturday in its stand-off with the UN's nuclear watchdog, with Beijing saying it opposed US efforts to have the Islamic republic referred to the United Nations Security Council.
The comments from Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing came as officials from Britain, France and Germany were trying to persuade Iran to limit its sensitive nuclear activities or risk possible international sanctions.
It was later announced from Paris that the talks had made "considerable progress" towards reaching a preliminary agreement on Tehran's nuclear program.
However Iran's top nuclear negotiator had earlier described the talks as "difficult" and said both sides were sticking to their positions.
"There is no reason to send the issue to the Security Council," Li said at a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharazi.
"It would only make the issue more complicated and difficult to work out," Li said, contradicting Washington by saying "the Iranian government is having a very positive attitude in its cooperation" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Li refused to speculate on whether China would use its veto in the Security Council in the event of Iran's case being sent there.
He did say he had told US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw "that China supports a solution in framework of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)".
The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of its civilian atomic energy program and wants the UN watchdog, the IAEA, to take Tehran to the UN Security Council when the agency meets in Vienna on November 25.
Tehran denies that charge, insisting it only wants to generate electricity.
Russia, another permanent and veto-wielding Security Council member, has also voiced its strong opposition to Iran's case being referred there by the IAEA. Moscow is helping Iran build its first nuclear power plant in a deal worth some 800 million dollars.
Li's comments added yet another layer of diplomatic difficulty for the European Union, which is using a "carrot and stick" approach with Iran in a bid to get it to suspend uranium enrichment.
But a French foreign ministry spokesman said late Saturday considerable progress had been towards reaching a preliminary agreement on Tehran's nuclear program.
"Following difficult discussions the two sides have achieved considerable progress towards a preliminary agreement on a joint approach to the questions," he told journalists.
The negotiations, which began Friday, were earlier said to have been deadlocked over the duration of a suspension as well as the timing or scope of incentives that the European Union could offer Iran.
The talks were conducted at senior official level, with the troika of Britain, France and Germany representing the 25-nation EU.
Europe's three powers have offered Iran nuclear technology, including access to nuclear fuel, increased trade and help with Tehran's regional security concerns if the Islamic Republic halts enrichment.
Enrichment is the sensitive part of the fuel cycle makes fuel for civilian reactors but it can also be used to manufacture the material for the explosive core of atomic weapons.
Tehran has until now resisted Europe's demand for an indefinite suspension, arguing that it would infringe its right to maintain a civilian nuclear power programme.
Enrichment is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- the treaty overseen by the IAEA and to which Iran is a signatory -- if for peaceful purposes.
After the talks in Paris a French diplomatic source described them as having been very difficult.
"The Iranians are fighting like lions," but the source added "contacts are to continue and hopefully enough progress has been made to form the basis of an agreement."
Hassan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, told state television before the Paris announcement Saturday that the talks in Paris were "very complicated and difficult" and reiterated Iran's refusal to give up what Tehran sees as its right to master the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle including enrichment.
"We will not accept any constraint. It is us who will decide on the duration (of a suspension of enrichment) and we will will keep it in place for as long as we want," said Rowhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. He said both sides were sticking to their positions on key questions.
A close aide to Rowhani engaged in the Paris talks, Hossein Moussavian, told state television here that Iran wanted the Europeans to define a rapid timetable for talks in the near future in return for the continuation of an enrichment suspension.
He said Iran was not interested in "open ended" dialogue on the issue, which has already dragged on for 18 months, and said topics needed to cover "economic, political, security and technology" cooperation between Iran and the EU.
He also said Iran was expecting the EU to back its bid to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), something that the US has been blocking.
----
China Seeks to Avoid Iran Nuclear Issue
November 6, 2004
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- China does not want to see Iran hauled before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program, but the nation's foreign minister would not say Saturday if China would veto any such censure.
Visiting Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said resolving the standoff within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, would "serve all parties."
His remarks came as Iranian and European officials met in Paris to continue negotiations aimed at a compromise. State-run television reported Saturday the Europeans had rejected an Iranian offer to suspend nuclear activities for six months.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, was quoted from Paris as saying both sides were showing flexibility, but agreement has not been reached.
Officials from Iran, Britain, Germany and France are holding their talks at an undisclosed location in Paris.
The three European powers have offered Iran a trade deal and peaceful nuclear technology - including a light-water research reactor - in return for assurances that the country will indefinitely stop uranium enrichment, a technology that can produce nuclear fuel or atomic weapons.
The Europeans have warned Iran that they will back Washington's threat to refer the Islamic republic to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions unless it gives up all uranium enrichment activities before a Nov. 25 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
Tehran suspended uranium enrichment last year but has refused to stop other related activities such as building centrifuges.
Li told reporters he had spoken by phone before arriving Saturday in Tehran with U.S. Secretary Colin Powell as well as top British and Japanese officials about how to "properly resolve" the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
"I told my colleagues that China supports a solution within IAEA. The Iranian government is having a very positive and active cooperation with the agency," Li said during a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi.
"Referral to the U.N. Security Council will only make the issue more complicated and more difficult to work out," he said.
However, asked if China would veto any Security Council call for sanctions, Li did not directly respond, saying only: "I don't really know if it will be brought to the Security Council."
Kharrazi described the Paris talks as "complicated and difficult," and reiterated Iran's insistence any solution recognize Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Senior Iranian officials, most recently supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, repeatedly have said Iran has no intention of building nuclear weapons as the United States contends.
Uranium enriched to a low level can be used to produce nuclear fuel, but if enriched further it can be used to make nuclear weapons. Iran is not prohibited from enriching uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but faces growing international pressure to suspend such activities.
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Iran and Europe Locked in Nuclear Talks
November 6, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/international/europe/06iran.html?pagewanted=all
PARIS, Nov. 5 - In an effort to stop Iran from producing a nuclear bomb, the 25 leaders of the European Union on Friday offered Iran economic and political incentives if it suspended its production of enriched uranium.
The proposal, issued in a statement at the end of a two-day summit meeting in Brussels, coincided with negotiations that opened here in which Iran was seeking concessions from France, Germany, Britain and the European Union to allow it to produce enriched uranium. Uranium can be enriched both for peaceful purposes and to develop nuclear weapons.
In the negotiations, which stretched late into the night, the Iranians were willing only to consider a temporary suspension of perhaps six months to buy time for a broader agreement and avoid the threat of sanctions, according to officials involved in the negotiations. One European official labeled the Iranian position "suspension minus."
The goal of the Europeans, by contrast, has been to push Iran to agree to suspend its uranium enrichment indefinitely in exchange for the promise of economic and political rewards, officials said.
Iran has said that its uranium enrichment program is only for energy production purposes, claiming it as a sovereign right and a matter of national pride. On Oct. 31, Iran's Parliament unanimously passed a bill supporting the resumption of uranium enrichment. On Tuesday, Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, ruled out a definitive halt to uranium enrichment but expressed confidence that a compromise could be reached.
"Our nation must be given the assurance that it will not be stripped of its right," Mr. Khatami told reporters at the Parliament, adding that he was optimistic that negotiations in Paris would succeed.
That sentiment was echoed by Hussein Mousavian, the Iranian negotiator in the talks, who told Iran's state television, "I am optimistic because the two parties are determined to reach an accord satisfactory to both."
The spirit of optimism seems to be grounded in two assumptions by Iran.
The first is that the Europeans seem willing to bend to Iran by offering concessions to avoid a confrontation on Nov. 25, when the United Nations' nuclear monitoring body, the International Atomic Energy Agency, meets in Vienna. The second assumption is that the international community will not have the political will to impose sanctions on Iran if it does not comply - particularly economic sanctions at a time when oil prices are so high.
Under pressure from the Bush administration, the I.A.E.A. is scheduled to rule at its meeting later this month on whether Iran has met demands that it cooperate fully to disclose its nuclear activities. The Bush administration is poised to turn the matter over to the Security Council for discussion of sanctions if Iran does not cooperate.
The Europeans, who have worked to avoid sanctions, nevertheless admit that Iran has reneged on an agreement reached with France, Germany and Britain in October 2003 to suspend uranium enrichment and to accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear sites.
In Brussels this week, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany said Iran had to "stop the fuel cycle." Otherwise, he predicted, "we are moving forward in a very serious situation."
But Iran has charged that the Europeans have reneged on their promises under last year's agreement to deliver peaceful nuclear technology and other economic incentives in exchange for its cooperation.
Mr. Mousavian has taken a hard line on the issue of uranium enrichment. "Cessation is rejected, indefinite suspension is rejected," he was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying in Tehran on Tuesday. "Suspension shall be a confidence-building measure and a voluntary decision by Iran and in no way a legal obligation."
To avoid a diplomatic showdown and to salvage last year's agreement, the Europeans proposed a package of economic incentives for Iran last month that included access to imported nuclear fuel for its reactors, help with regional security concerns, and increased trade, including access to spare parts for Iran's aging airline industry.
That incentive strategy was underscored in the European Union decision contained in the European Union's statement on Friday. "A full and sustained suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing activities, on a voluntary basis, would open the door for talks on long-term cooperation offering mutual benefits," the statement said.
The European leaders also pledged to press for long-term "political, economic and technological" cooperation and the resumption of negotiations on a trade agreement between Iran and the European Union.
In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, took the unusual step of delivering the weekly Friday Prayer sermon in which he insisted that Iran had no intention of developing nuclear weapons, which, he said, were forbidden under Islam.
"They accuse us of pursuing nuclear weapons," Ayatollah Khamenei said. "I am telling them as I have said before that we are not even thinking about nuclear weapons. Our nuclear weapon is our young and devoted youth and our believing nation."
In an interview published Friday in The San Francisco Chronicle, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he had no clear proof that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. "We haven't seen any concrete evidence that points to a fact that Iran has a nuclear weapons program," he said in the article. "We have seen Iran experimenting with all aspects of the fuel cycle, but we still have lots of work to do."
But the United States, Britain, France and Germany and other countries believe that despite its denials, Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program under cover of its civilian atomic energy program.
-------- mideast
APNewsBreak: Traces of plutonium found at Egyptian nuclear facility
(AP)
November 6, 2004
http://www.fox23news.com/news/world/story.aspx?content_id=80021F14-DEA0-4DDA-8B63-D4AC3DB9C990
VIENNA, Austria - U.N. experts have found traces of plutonium near an Egyptian nuclear facility and are investigating whether it could be weapons-related or simply a byproduct of the country's peaceful atomic activities, diplomats told The Associated Press on Friday.
The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned against assuming that Egypt might have contravened the Nonproliferation Treaty by trying to separate plutonium, a substance used in nuclear weapons. The traces could be from a cracked research reactor fuel element or have other origins that have nothing to do with weapons research, they said.
"From time to time, these things pop up in places they should not be at," said a diplomat familiar with the investigations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. "Most of the time, there is a reasonable answer."
Still, he said IAEA experts were considering all scenarios that would explain the origin of the particles pending the completion of analysis of the environmental samples in several European laboratories.
The diplomat said the IAEA's information was still too sketchy to firmly establish how old the plutonium traces were but suggested they appeared to have been released into the environment no later than the 1980s.
Egypt appeared to turn away from the pursuit of a nuclear weapons program decades ago. The Soviet Union and China reportedly rebuffed its requests for nuclear arms in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, Egypt gave up the idea of building a plutonium production reactor and reprocessing plant.
Egypt runs small-scale nuclear programs for medical and research purposes. Plans were floated as recently as 2002 to build the country's first nuclear power reactor, but no construction date has been announced.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
U.S. Wins Washington Nuke Sludge Ruling
Saturday November 6, 2004
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4599279,00.html
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that it was too early to decide whether the Energy Department should be allowed to leave radioactive sludge in underground tanks in Washington state instead of shipping it to a central repository.
Friday's ruling overturns a lower-court ruling in the lawsuit brought by environmental groups and American Indian tribes. The lawsuit claimed mixing the sludge and combining it with concrete grout - as the government plans for Idaho, South Carolina and Washington state - could endanger groundwater and rivers.
The Energy Department maintains that some highly radioactive residue in the waste tanks is too expensive to extract. The department has proposed reclassifying it as less dangerous, combining it with grout and leaving it in place.
Although the lawsuit cites all three states, only Washington state is affected by the ruling because Congress approved a measure this year allowing the reclassification for South Carolina and Idaho.
Friday's ruling overturns a decision last year by a federal judge in Idaho who barred the Energy Department from reclassifying the waste.
Washington and several other states filed ``friend of the court'' briefs to the appellate court, asking it to uphold the Idaho judge's decision.
The appeals court panel said it was too soon to determine if the Energy Department's plans violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Waiting would not be a greater danger ``than the one already imposed by our high-level-waste Frankenstein,'' said the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Elliott Negin, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, denied that the ruling was a defeat for the environmental group. ``All it said is that the timing is off,'' he said.
Colleen French, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said the agency was reviewing the ruling and would not comment.
As much as 100 million gallons of nuclear waste were stored over the years in 239 tanks in the three states. Some of it has been removed and processed for permanent disposal, but about 85 million gallons remain to be processed.
Critics contended that leaving any waste in those tanks will threaten the Columbia River at south-central Washington's Hanford site, as well as the Snake River aquifer under the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and the groundwater at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
About 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from World War II and Cold War-era plutonium production is buried in Hanford's 177 aging underground tanks. An estimated 67 of the tanks have leaked radioactive brew into the soil, contaminating the aquifer and threatening the Columbia River less than 10 miles away.
Under a 1989 agreement, the Energy Department is required to remove at least 99 percent of the waste at Hanford.
On Tuesday, Washington state voters approved an initiative requiring the Energy Department to clean up all the tank waste, among other things. The initiative is expected to face legal challenges.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Sudan Peace Talks Stall Over the Issue of Flights Over Darfur
November 6, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/international/africa/06darfur.html?pagewanted=all
ABUJA, Nigeria, Nov. 5 (AP) - Disagreement over banning flights over Sudan's troubled Darfur region stalled the signing of a security accord between the government and rebels, who met for another day of talks on Friday here in Nigeria's capital.
The United Nations said the security situation in the region continued to deteriorate, undermining the ability of United Nations agencies to provide aid.
African Union mediators and Western diplomats have been trying for two weeks to broker an accord to end fighting in Darfur that has uprooted 1.6 million people and killed tens of thousands.
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria met Thursday with rebels and government officials to break the deadlock over flight restrictions in Darfur.
"The headache is the question of the no-fly zone all over Darfur," said Ibrahim Mohammed Ibrahim, the spokesman for Sudan's government delegation. "We are negotiating on that exclusive point." The day's talks ended with no agreement.
The draft calls for "an effective cease-fire on land and air, in particular: refraining from all hostilities and military actions."
Pressure from Mr. Obasanjo and others appeared to have yielded results when both rebel groups at the talks announced at late-night talks on Thursday that they would sign the accord without any amendments.
However, the Sudanese government is refusing to sign. The head of the government delegation, Majzoub Khalifa, has said he will accept the restriction on flights only in return for a promise by rebels to confine themselves to specified garrisons.
The African Union's chief mediator at the talks, Allan-Mi Ahmad of Chad, said the body would not budge on what was in the draft accord.
Sudan's Arab-dominated government is accused of carrying out bombing raids in coordination with ground attacks by Arab tribal militia on the villages of non-Arab African farmers.
Sudan's government is accused of backing Arab militiamen in a campaign of violence including rapes, killings and the burning of villages in order to put down a 20-month rebellion by non-Arab African groups. The government denies the charge.
Hardships like disease and malnutrition are believed to have killed more than 70,000 of the displaced within Darfur since March. Many more have been killed in fighting since the conflict broke out in February 2003, although there is no firm estimate of the direct toll.
The talks began in Abuja two weeks ago after two earlier rounds collapsed.
South African military officials said Friday that they expected to grant an African Union request to send about 200 more troops to join the peace mission in Darfur. The contingent would assist in monitoring an April 8 cease-fire between the government and rebel groups, the South African military said.
The African Union is in the process of increasing its mission in Darfur sevenfold, to more than 3,000 people.
Tension has mounted in Darfur since the abduction of 18 Sudanese of Arab origin last week, and non-Arab African refugees are worried about possible government reprisals.
"There is violence that is increasing across the region," said José Díaz, spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
Mr. Díaz cited the use of helicopter gunships and the forced relocation of refugees from camps back to villages, where they have little protection from Arab militias known as the janjaweed. "The government of Sudan does not seem to be carrying out any effort to disarm the janjaweed or bring them to justice," he said in Geneva.
----
AU condemns Ivory Coast air raids
BBC
6 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3987787.stm
The African Union has condemned the government of Ivory Coast for mounting air strikes on rebel areas in the north and urged both sides to cease firing.
Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian leader who chairs the AU, voiced deep concern at the bombing, saying it contravened accords on ending the civil war.
A rebel town came under attack for the third day running as Mr Obasanjo held talks in Otta, south-west Nigeria.
The violence marks the first major unrest since last year's peace deal.
Two planes dropped bombs on the rebel stronghold of Bouake at about 1300 GMT on Saturday, a UN official in the town told Reuters news agency by telephone.
Reports also spoke of machine-gun fire and mortar bombardment around the town, but it is unclear where the fire has been coming from.
The BBC's Anna Borzello reports from Nigeria that it was originally thought the Ivorian government and rebels might attend the talks in Otta, hastily convened by Mr Obasanjo.
In the event, it turned out to be a brief consultation between high-level officials from the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
Stronger mandate
President Obasanjo called on the UN to strengthen its mandate in the country, so that its troops could better deal with truce violations.
Young Patriots demonstrating in the Ivorian city of Abidjan on Thursday
In Pictures: Showing anger Peace process in tatters?
Only the UN's Security Council has the authority to increase the powers of the peacekeepers.
The new violence went against "the process of national reconciliation", the Nigerian leader added in a press statement, issued after talks with colleagues including AU head Alpha Oumar Konare.
Both the AU and Ecowas urged all parties in the conflict to halt all hostilities and promised to set up a "high-powered committee to address the political issues involved in the conflict".
UN officials in Ivory Coast said earlier that 18 people, most of them civilians, had been killed in the bombing attacks.
UN peacekeepers intervened on Friday to stop two convoys of government troops moving north. There are fears that the air strikes may be preparation for a government ground attack.
BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Welsh says stopping government aircraft attacks is difficult, because even if the peacekeepers had the authority to shoot them out of the sky, it would be likely to cause violent demonstrations by those fiercely loyal to the president.
The country has been split in two since last year's peace deal, with 10,000 French and UN troops deployed to monitor the ceasefire.
Last week, the rebels, known as the New Forces, withdrew their ministers from the unity government, accusing the army of preparing to return to war.
Street protests
Government aircraft bombed Bouake three times on Thursday alone and also attacked Korhogo, 225km (140 miles) to the north. Fresh strikes followed on Friday.
Demonstrators took to the streets of the economic capital, Abidjan, setting fire to buildings housing opposition parties and newspapers accused of colluding with the rebels.
Much of the violence in the city has been blamed on the Young Patriots, a group which supports President Laurent Gbagbo.
Ground battles also took place between government and former rebel forces in the central town of Raviar, in the UN-patrolled buffer zone which splits the country, the UN said.
The New Forces rebels have said they will act if government forces cross the UN buffer zone.
Government officials have not confirmed the air strikes.
-------- arms
WEAPONS
U.S. Expands List of Lost Missiles
November 6, 2004
The New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/06weapons.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday.
A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said.
The officials said they did not know whether missiles from Iraq remain there or have been smuggled into other countries, though a senior administration official said Friday that "there is no evidence that they have left the country.''
It was unclear whether Iraqi military or intelligence personnel removed the missile systems during the initial invasion of Iraq or whether they disappeared from warehouses after major combat ended.
Shoulder-fired missiles - which are small, lethal and easy to use - are attractive weapons for terrorists. In recent months, Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda intends to use them to shoot down planes. In 2002, attackers who launched two small Russian-made SA-7 missiles almost hit a commercial aircraft taking off from Mombasa, Kenya. The new estimate of a larger number of the missile systems was discussed at a classified Defense Intelligence Agency conference in Alabama this week, the officials said. They declined to discuss the methods by which the new estimate had been reached, saying that it was classified.
American intelligence analysts have said in the past that during Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraq stockpiled at least 5,000 of these missile systems, and that fewer than a third had been recovered. The shelf life of the missiles can vary, with battery life depending on the conditions under which they are stored.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last fall that "no threat is more serious to aviation" than the shoulder-fired missiles, which can be bought on the black market for as little as $5,000, are about five feet long and weigh as little as 35 pounds. More than 40 aircraft have been struck by shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles since the 1970's, causing at least 24 crashes and more than 600 deaths worldwide, according to a State Department estimate. In Iraq, the missiles have been used in more than a dozen attacks on American planes and helicopters, including those taking off and landing at Baghdad's international airport.
In recent months, the number of successful missile attacks on American aircraft and helicopters in Iraq has declined, but American officials have said the reason has largely been the precautionary measures taken by the United States military.
An unclassified study released in June 2004 by what is now the Government Accountability Office cited "U.S. government estimates" that a few thousand of the portable missiles were "outside government controls.'' A separate study released in November 2003 by the Congressional Research Service cited counterterrorism experts in saying that as many as 4,000 to 5,000 shoulder-fired missiles might be available to Iraqi insurgents.
The new estimate by American intelligence agencies was described by government officials who had access to the classified intelligence report. They said the tripling of the number represented the first formal effort to determine how unaccounted Iraqi stockpiles may have compounded the surface-to-air missile threat. Only several hundred shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles from the Iraqi arsenals have been turned in to American forces in a buyout program, the government officials said.
A Defense Department official said Friday that more than one million shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles had been produced since the weapons were first manufactured in the 1950's, with 20 countries producing more than 35 different types of weapons. According to the accountability office study, 500,000 to 750,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles are still believed to be in the worldwide inventory. Many of the older missiles are militarily obsolete and have been destroyed.
Until the invasion of Iraq, many of the shoulder-fired weapons believed to be outside government controls were those provided by the United States and its allies to mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan to assist in their resistance against Soviet forces during the 1980's. Those weapons included American-made Stinger and British-made Blowpipe missiles, but by December 2002, American-led forces in Afghanistan had captured more than 5,000 of the missiles from the Taliban and Al Qaeda, according to news reports at the time.
The Defense Intelligence Agency conference on the worldwide threat to civil aviation posed by these portable air defense systems was held Wednesday and Thursday by the agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center, at Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Ala.
The range and accuracy of the weapons can vary widely by type, with the Russian-made SA-16 regarded as the most lethal in Iraq's prewar arsenal. It is not known how many of the missiles may have been fired at American planes and helicopters during the invasion in 2003.
In an effort to address the missile threat, the Department of Homeland Security has asked government contractors to find a way to protect passenger jets from small shoulder-fired missiles. The technology has been installed on military planes for years, using laser-jamming equipment and decoy flares to deflect the missiles, and some contractors have determined that passenger planes could be outfitted with antimissile technology relatively soon.
The State Department has also started an aggressive effort to persuade other countries to join in an effort to limit the availability and proliferation of the weapons. In July, the House of Representatives passed a bill that calls on the president to pursue even stronger measures, and directs the administration to expedite approval of new antimissile technologies. The Senate has not yet acted on the bill.
The new government estimate follows the disclosure late last month that more than 300 tons of powerful explosives had disappeared since early March 2003 from an Iraqi site previously monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Video images that emerged after that report appears to suggest that at least some of the explosive material disappeared after the fall of the Iraqi government. Unlike those explosives, surface-to-air missiles in Iraq were not sealed or monitored by weapons inspectors before the war and may have been widely dispersed among the Iraqi forces in the field.
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US triples global estimate of shoulder fired missiles
NEW YORK (AFP)
Nov 06, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041106174058.6sjyt8rn.html
After the fall of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein US intelligence services tripled their estimate of the number of shoulder-fired missiles in circulation, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Before the war officials estimated some 2,000 such deadly missiles were circulating out of the control of national armies. Now they believe the number is around around 6,000, according to the Times.
Shoulder-fired missiles are small and easy to use against aircraft.
US analysts estimated that Saddam's regime had a stockpile of at least 5,000 shoulder-fired missiles, but less than a third have been accounted for, leaving some 4,000 missiles missing, according to the Times.
The missing Iraqi missiles include Russian-built SAM 7 and SAM 16.
Officials do not know if the missiles were removed during the US-led invasion or looted from arsenals after the regime collapsed.
It is also unknown if the missiles have been taken out of the country or are in the hands of Iraqi insurgents.
Since the fall of Saddam's regime about a dozen shoulder-fired missiles have been used to attack US planes or helicopters. US officials say there have been few recent attacks because of precautionary tactical measures.
-------- asia
Banzai! Debunking the kamikaze myth
Asia Times
Nov 6, 2004
By Bennett Richardson and Fumiko Hattori
http://atimes.com/atimes/Japan/FK06Dh01.html
MABAL ACAT, Philippines - Like many violent acts during wartime, the Japanese kamikaze attacks of World War II have been vilified or conveniently dismissed as a freakish aberration that cannot be understood in rational terms. The self-sacrifice of the young Japanese pilots has been written into popular history as derived from an extreme interpretation of the samurai code and the wartime belief that the Japanese emperor was a living god.
"Banzai!" or "Long Live the Emperor", was their battle cry, or so popular mythology has it.
But the way the pilots who survived the war tell it, their prime motivation was simply desperation to protect the people they loved from coming to harm in a war that was rapidly - and very clearly - deteriorating into defeat. If they could keep the Allies from their shores and loved ones, they would have achieved their purpose.
In interviews conducted in Japan, some of the would-be kamikazes expressed relief, sadness even today that their comrades had died, and even some survivor guilt.
A handful of veteran Japanese pilots and their families gathered here on October 25 to pay tribute to that sentiment, at the spot where the first kamikaze mission took off exactly 60 years ago from a nondescript airfield about 80 kilometers north of Manila.
Local historian and artist Daniel Dizon witnessed the departure of the original kamikaze pilots on their missions when he was a boy of 14. He said most of the pilots "acted like they were going on a picnic". Dizon has been instrumental in creating kamikaze memorials in the area, and last month he helped to unveil a statue of a kamikaze pilot, a memorial largely funded by Filipino admirers in of what they consider the pilots' extraordinary courage.
"How can you forget something like that? They were brave - it's difficult to describe," Dizon told Asia Times Online.
One of the pilots at the memorial, Tsukasa Abe, now 77, said, "I am extremely grateful that the local people have erected this statue for us ... I am grateful that relations haven't been ruined despite what the Japanese did" in the Philippines.
After successive defeats across the Pacific, Japanese commanders had recognized by October 1944 that it was only a matter of time before the United States would invade the main islands of Japan itself. As the number of operational planes diminished and the Allies increasingly focused on the Pacific theater, senior Japanese navy air commanders decided there was no alternative but to create a special-forces unit to crash dive planes, armed with 250-kilogram bombs, into the flight decks of enemy carriers. These aircraft and the men who flew them came to be known as the kamikaze, named after a divine wind that saved Japan from a Mongol invasion in 1274. This legendary wind, probably a typhoon, destroyed Kublai Khan's fleet as it lay at anchor off the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.
The kamikaze name apparently was given to the first group asked to volunteer in the Philippines by senior commanders who ordered the tactic. The moniker was supposed to be something of an honorific for the original unit only, but quickly it came to be applied to other units using the same suicide tactic.
Kamikaze known as 'special forces' The kamikaze were widely known as "special forces" - the pilots did not call themselves kamikaze - but the word became popularized and has stuck in the Western imagination; it has come to mean anyone who acts recklessly or suicidally. That was far from the case with the pilots, interviews with a number of them in Japan showed. They survived because their missions were aborted, they couldn't find a suitable target, they themselves were shot down and forced to ditch into the water, or they had to turn back because of bad weather or mechanical failure.
"Not one person went because they thought they wanted to die," Toyotaro Nakajima, a former special-forces pilot, said in an interview. He later ended up living and working in the US for many years. "It was an order - help your country, your country being the family that you loved, your brothers and sisters, friends, your home town - to protect these things from the enemy," he told Asia Times Online.
After the kamikaze sinking of the aircraft carrier Saint Lo on October 25, 1944, in Leyte Gulf off the coast of the Philippines proved that the tactic could inflict severe damage, the Japanese navy expanded the special forces during the Battle of Okinawa. According to the US Strategic Bombing Report on the Pacific War, the Japanese flew 2,550 kamikaze missions from October 1944 to the end of the Okinawa campaign in June 1945, the vast majority of the kamikaze missions, though final and definitive figures were not collected by the US after the Okinawa campaign.
They managed a hit rate of about one in five planes; that is, one in five planes managed to hit an enemy ship, sinking some, damaging others. Others had mechanical problems during flight, ran into enemy air cover en route to the front, or were hit by anti-aircraft fire from the ships they were trying to hit.
Other former kamikaze pilots agreed that most special-forces pilots were thinking primarily about their families when they left on their one-way missions.
No one shouted Banzai for the Emperor! Shigemitsu Saito, now 78, a fighter pilot in campaigns including those in New Guinea and Guadalcanal, said the schoolboy comic-book image of the Emperor-worshipping kamikaze pilot bears little relation to reality. "The Emperor never really came into it - that's just something the newspapers made up. I doubt anyone actually went to his death shouting 'Banzai for the Emperor!'" he laughed.
Though the initial units were directly asked to volunteer for such missions by their superiors, later pilots were asked to fill in a form and state whether they would be willing to go on such missions - most pilots said they would. Then those who had expressed willingness later received a "special-forces order" from central command, and then they had to go. These orders were often posted on notice boards at air bases for all to see. Because pilots knew that their chances of surviving the war were slim to begin with, the prevailing sentiment at the time was that they should seize any chance that their deaths would not be wasted - by keeping the enemy away from Japanese shores.
Hiromi Kawasaki, now 77, was a navy pilot trainee when he saw a recruitment poster for a top-secret project pinned to the notice board at his base. The stand-out attraction for the 18-year-old was that volunteers would have the chance to go to the front after only two or three months of training. Given that it could have taken up to a year to see combat if he had stayed in the regular forces, Kawasaki took little heed of the warning on the poster that the mission had "no guarantee of survival".
He was assigned to the manned-torpedo unit, a variation on the original crash-dive aerial tactic. Kawasaki was trained to pilot a single-man torpedo with a 1.55-ton explosive warhead into enemy ships, using little more than a stopwatch and a periscope for navigation.
He said he had few qualms about volunteering, as the probability of death for an ordinary Japanese navy pilot was already extremely high - Japanese soldiers used to joke that joining the military not only got you a discount on your movie tickets but also on your life span, he laughed. "From the outset, I never really expected to return from the front," he told Asia Times Online.
But since Kawasaki was posted to coastal Shikoku in southern Japan to await the US invasion that never came, he lived to tell the tale.
Kawasaki said that during the war, the manned-torpedo pilots all wanted to take part in an attack and eagerly waited their turn on the attack roster. Missions were assigned according to the order in which pilots had graduated from training, with the first graduates assigned to the first missions. And so if someone botched his mission and had to be reassigned to the next attack, it was always very disappointing for the younger pilots waiting further down the line, he recalled.
They didn't care for money, fame or life "We thought we didn't need money, or fame, or our lives - that was the mindset," Kawasaki said.
But once the war ended, he realized he would have to find a way to live. Eventually, he ended up working in a flour mill and getting married.
"I've been able to lead an interesting life," he said, adding that if he had the chance to go back in time, he probably wouldn't place himself in harm's way so enthusiastically. "It seems strange that I was a soldier at 18 and now I'm almost 80."
Some of the survivors escaped death when the war fortuitously ended before the day of their scheduled sortie. Former special-forces pilot Tsukasa Abe, interviewed in the Philippines, dodged what would have been his fate by just a few hours - his scheduled mission was for the afternoon of August 15, 1945, but at noon the Emperor of Japan broadcast to the nation that Japan must "endure the unendurable" and accept defeat.
Of those pilots who remain, almost all watched close friends fly off to sacrifice their lives in kamikaze attacks.
"It was very painful to see them off," remembered one special-forces pilot. "They were going first and you were staying behind, so you felt indebted in a way." And yet despite seeing his friends perish in this manner, this pilot, who declined to give his name, was remarkably candid about how it felt to realize that it would not be his fate to die in battle.
"It would be a lie to say that I didn't have at least some feeling that I was glad I wasn't chosen," he said.
Although the use of the kamikaze tactic didn't change the final outcome of the war, there is some evidence that those pilots who flew to their deaths hundreds of kilometers away were indirectly able to protect their families from harm. Because of the threat posed by the kamikaze attacks to Allied forces, more than 2,000 B-29 sorties that were to have attacked civilian and industrial targets in mainland Japanese cities ended up being diverted to striking kamikaze airfields in Kyushu.
Reliable estimates indicate that between 34 and 45 ships were sunk by kamikaze attacks and hundreds more were damaged. Kamikaze pilots were also known to ram enemy planes in midair. In addition, many sailors who witnessed kamikaze attacks suffered psychological trauma due to the shocking nature of the suicide tactic.
US sailors terrified of kamikaze Bill Obitz, standing just a short distance from where a kamikaze plane hit the USS Missouri on April 11, 1945, said sailors were scared of kamikaze because "you knew when they came in that that you were either going to shoot them down or they were going to dive into the ship".
While the bomb failed to explode in the attack he witnessed that day, Obitz said the dedication evident as the pilot lined up his single-man plane on the final run toward 45,000 tons of battleship firepower was fearsome. It was awe-inspiring that "you knew that he wouldn't turn back", Obitz said.
Some have suggested that the Japanese kamikaze were an inspiration for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago, on September 11, 2001, but the surviving pilots unanimously disavowed any comparison to modern terrorists - their aim in World War II was only to hit military targets. Whether the September 11 terrorists ever thought about the Japanese kamikaze attacks will never be known.
"It's a major mistake to say that the September 11 attacks were kamikaze attacks - the special forces were only ever used in a theater of war," said Kawasaki, the former manned torpedo pilot who never got his chance to die. "We never carried out any attacks [against civilians] like the ones on September 11," he said.
The former pilots also said it was a soldier's duty to obey orders and their underlying motivation was different from that of today's suicide bombers. The kamikaze tactic was a defense to keep the Allies at bay, more than an attack.
"Nobody was chasing after death or trying to commit suicide - we did it because we had a duty to protect our country. To me, there's a major difference," said former kamikaze pilot Nakajima.
Bennett Richardson is a Tokyo-based freelance journalist with a special interest in Japanese defense policy, politics and modern history. Fumiko Hattori is an independent researcher and translator specializing in the World War II Pacific theater.
-------- balkans
Ethnic Rivalries Still Bitter in Balkans
Kosovo, Bosnia Sharply Divided; Macedonians Fear Vote May Spark Violence
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29172-2004Nov5?language=printer
LJIPJAN, Serbia and Montenegro -- Naser Bytyci and Branko Smilic are dentists who pulled teeth from fighters on opposite sides of Kosovo's ethnic war. Five years into a tenuous peace between ethnic Albanians and Serbs, the dentists live in the same town and practice the same profession. But Bytyci, an ethnic Albanian, pulls only Albanian teeth, and Smilic, a Serb, pulls only the teeth of Serbs.
Bytyci says he would not mind fixing Serb teeth, but that all the Serbs in town refuse to visit him or Albanian doctors of any sort. Smilic professes to be uninterested in giving Albanians root canals.
"It is better for each side to take care of its own," said Smilic, a stout man with a round face. "Suppose a patient got angry and began blaming the doctor because he was Serb or Albanian?"
It is safer, too, he argues, because recent violence against Serbs demonstrated that the foreign peacekeeping troops here cannot protect the Serbs.
The divided dentistry represents a persistent problem for Kosovo half a decade after NATO-led forces pushed the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army from the province and freed the ethnic Albanians from rule by then-president and current war crimes defendant Slobodan Milosevic.
Not only are the majority Albanians and minority Serbs living in segregated, mutually hostile communities, but they have been unable to integrate even ostensibly neutral public services such as health care. The "parallel structures" mock the stated aims of U.N. overseers in Kosovo to create a multiethnic society in advance of talks designed to resolve the political status of the province, which remains officially part of Serbia.
Kosovo's problems have a cousin in Macedonia to the south. There, a seemingly innocuous plan to reduce the number of municipalities nationwide by consolidating several areas has riled the majority Slavic population, which identifies itself simply as Macedonian.
The Macedonians assert that the plan, part of a U.S.-supported program of ethnic reconciliation, will make worse what they call efforts by the Albanian minority to split the country in two. Albanians say they just want to redress gerrymandering that has kept them at a political disadvantage.
The Macedonians have called a referendum, scheduled for Sunday, to squelch the municipal boundary plan. Several Macedonian analysts speak darkly of renewed violence if the referendum fails. A riot by Macedonians in July -- with trash and cars burned and windows smashed in the town of Struga -- provided a taste of the possible consequences, they say. Conversely, Albanians predict violence if the referendum kills the plan.
All over the Balkans region, the violence that burned in the 1990s has been doused, but the basic conflicts are unresolved. General trends are often negative.
In Bosnia, efforts to bring Serbs, Croats and Muslims into a workable government partnership have stalled. Few refugees who were driven from their homes during Serb campaigns of ethnic cleansing have returned permanently. Nor have Serbs returned after fleeing such places as the Bosnian capital Sarajevo at war's end. Croats remain segregated from Muslims in the western city of Mostar, touted as a symbol of peace when its graceful Ottoman-era bridge was recently restored. The town is almost totally devoid of Serbs.
Further afield, ethnic rivalry within Serbia and Montenegro, the last remaining chunks of Yugoslavia still glued together, threatens the country's unity. In 2006, the two republics are scheduled to vote on whether to remain united. Some Montenegrins are campaigning for secession.
Officials of the European Union, which has pressed to keep Serbia and Montenegro in one piece, say they fear that a Montenegrin exit would create an epidemic of breakups in neighboring countries: Serbs and Croats would want to go their own way in Bosnia, as would Albanians in Kosovo, other parts of Serbia and Macedonia.
A visit to Kosovo produces a sense of movement away from conciliation. The province held parliamentary elections on Oct. 23, but all but a handful of the approximately 120,000 Serbs who live among 1.7 million Albanians boycotted the vote, even though Serbs are guaranteed 10 of the 120 seats in the legislature.
In March, Albanians rioted, burning thousands of Serbs out of their homes. Nine Serbs and 12 Albanians died in the violence. Many Serbs left in the aftermath, resulting in a net loss of the Serb population for this year, U.N. officials say.
Smilic sent his wife and two children into exile in Serbia to escape the house burnings. He said he remained behind in part for protest, in part for economic advantage. The Serbian government in Belgrade pays him a stipend to stay put. He also collects pay for his dental services from the Albanian government in Pristina. However, he resists demands that he integrate with the Albanian staff at the main health center in the town.
He said that after the 1999 war, the center was renovated and the Serb staff, reduced from its prewar dominance, asked for a separate entrance for both medical personnel and patients. When that was refused, the Serbs set up a clinic in a private house.
"Of course, I don't think our Albanian colleagues would attack us if we went to the health center," said Smilic . "But there is danger from outsiders." He says the root of the problem lies in Albanian demands for full independence from Serbia, a subject that will arise at international talks proposed for as early as next year. "They want to be independent, and that means no Serbs. We can't move freely around here now, you can imagine if the peacekeepers leave and just the Albanians are in charge," he said.
Bytyci says the Serb fears, while authentic, serve as an excuse for radicals in that community to avoid any contact with Albanians in any institution. "We have three entrances to the health center. The Serbs can use any one they want," he said at his dental office near the clinic. Serb doctors and dentists "are taking money from the Kosovo government, but refuse to coordinate. No one knows where and if they work. They just come once in a while, take a share of medicines and disappear."
Bytyci said he has complained about this to UNMIK, the U.N. administrators in Kosovo. He said the Serbs receive almost a quarter of the local health budget, which, according to Bytyci, is excessive given their proportion of the town population. "The U.N. says it has to be careful. They don't want to upset anyone, so they don't do anything," Bytyci said.
U.N. officials acknowledge the problem but are reluctant to take dramatic steps. "At this stage, a lot of progress does not depend on the international side. You need a lot more from the local communities," said Peggy Hicks, director of UNMIK's office of returning refugees. "That's the key ingredient."
In Macedonia, unlike Kosovo, Albanians and Macedonians work together in government and have not adopted strict separation. Macedonians outnumber Albanians by about two to one in a total population of more than 2 million.
The proposed municipal reform originated in the so-called Ohrid agreement, which was negotiated under U.S. and European Union mediation in 2001 in a city by that name to end a seven-month armed revolt by Albanians. Albanians in Kosovo abetted the fighting.
Under the Ohrid deal, the Macedonians and Albanians agreed to increase the use of the Albanian language in government offices and to increase Albanian employment there. In recent weeks, envoys from the United States and E.U. have paraded through Macedonia to campaign against overturning the municipal reorganization plan. The E.U. has warned Macedonia that the dust-up could delay Macedonia's eventual membership in the union. Marc Grossman, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, advised that "Macedonia again faces a choice between the past and future," the Reuter news service reported.
In Struga, the plan yokes outlying villages and city under a single administration and makes Albanians the majority in the new political unit. At first, the Struga riot was directed against the local political offices of Macedonia's defense minister, Vlado Muchkovski, who was visiting the town, but it spread to other parts of town. Attitudes have not softened since.
On the Corso, the main pedestrian promenade in the resort town, café owners Micko Markovsky, a Macedonian, and Nusrat Ziba, an Albanian, serve about the same quality cappuccino and play the same Euro-pop music over their boom boxes, but agree on almost nothing else.
"We have change after change and they favor the Albanians," said Markovsky, who owns the Mia Pizzeria and Bistro. "What we need is jobs and the government concentrates on things that are not needed instead. This plan looks like a road to breaking Macedonia into two."
Ziba, owner of Queen's Bar, claimed that police stood aside as rioters rampaged up his street. "The Macedonians are used to privilege and don't want to recognize us as equals," he said. "Believe me, if we rioted like they did, there would have been plenty of dead Albanians around."
-------- china
China: Damage Control After Criticizing Bush
(Inter Press Service)
by Antoaneta Bezlova
November 6, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/bezlova.php?articleid=3918
BEIJING - The 2004 vote for the U.S. president would have gone down in history as one of the most painless polls for China since Washington recognized its communist government in 1979, had it not been for a political gaffe committed by Beijing on the eve of the elections.
Although Beijing tried to distance itself from stinging remarks by the respected former foreign minister Qian Qichen, who hit out at the Bush administration's "cocksureness and arrogance" in its attempt to "rule the world," the published commentary, nonetheless, exposed certain Chinese leaders' anxiety over U.S. unilateralism and its future manifestations.
The incident also marred what promised to be a remarkably trouble-free U.S. election for Beijing. For the first time since the 1970s, China was no longer a vote-swinging issue in the U.S. presidential election campaign.
"The anti-China platform hasn't been vociferous in these U.S. elections," remarked Professor Rick Baum, political scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles..
In previous elections, challengers always assailed the incumbent president as being too "friendly" with Beijing leaders. Accusations against Beijing ranged from condemnation of the country's human rights record and the subjugation of the Tibetan people to China's alleged stealing of U.S. jobs.
However, the China threat hardly featured in the salvo of critical appraisals fired at U.S. President George W. Bush by his Democrat challenger John Kerry. And mainland Chinese analysts agreed more than disagreed that whoever won the elections, it would make little difference to U.S.-China relations.
"Unlike previous U.S. elections, this time both [Republican and Democratic] candidates have a clear recognition of China's rise as a world power and its importance as a strategic ally," said Zhang Guoqing, research fellow with the American Studies Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"This U.S. acknowledgment of China's increasing world influence can not be easily undermined by a mere change of the U.S. president," Zhang said in an interview. Xue Yabo, a researcher with the Institute for National Defense under the China Renmin University, went even further to suggest that the "Bush administration's neoconservatism has contributed to the revival of American policy [that gravitates] toward China." "There is a tacit political agreement between Beijing and Washington that no other domestic considerations by either side should be allowed to disturb the global effort to combat terrorism," Xue wrote in the Beijing-based Xinjing Bao daily.
"The fight against terrorism is the core of Bush's neoconservative politics and Washington's policies toward China in the foreseeable future would be unavoidably constrained by this," he added.
Both U.S. and Chinese observers have praised relations between the two countries in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, as the "best ever" - with Beijing aligning itself with Washington in the "global war against terrorism." Also, both sides concentrated on expanding economic and trade ties with one another.
Although China opposed the war in Iraq, the overall climate had continued to be free of visible tensions.
But just as Beijing was becoming comfortable about any outcome of the elections, a press blunder exposed the undercurrent flaws in U.S.-China relations.
On Monday, the state-run English-language China Daily carried a prominent commentary by Qian - who happens to be the doyen of Chinese foreign policy. The timing of the article itself was prominent and it marked a sharp departure from Beijing's past refusal to comment on U.S. presidential elections.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry later said that the article was not "specially commissioned" and its timing was unfortunate. But whatever the circumstances behind its publication, there was little doubt about its unabashedly anti-Bush stance.
The commentary insinuated that Beijing is uneasy about the change of political dynamics in the aftermath of a U.S.-led anti-Iraq campaign. Also, Qian hinted that China was wary of another four years of the Bush administration, in terms of what it could deliver on the international front.
Qian also accused Bush's government of having "opened a Pandora's box, intensifying various intermingled conflicts, such as ethnic and religious ones." He criticized the "Bush doctrine" in which the United States created the so-called "axis of evil" and allowed for "preemptive strategies" to rule U.S. politics.
Within China's diplomatic circles, Qian's comments have been taken seriously.
Although retired, he is said to exert strong behind-the-scenes influence in China's foreign policy, and many diplomats believe his comments could reflect the thinking of certain Chinese leaders.
Qian is the most revered senior Chinese diplomat, who is credited with reestablishing China's international standing in the aftermath of the 1989 bloody crackdown on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square.
In the hours after Bush's reelection was confirmed, Beijing tried to repair the diplomatic damage done by the former foreign minister's remarks.
In a congratulatory message sent to the White House, President Hu Jintao lauded the progress in Sino-U.S. relations during Bush's first term in office.
Hu also said he was looking forward to working with President Bush in promoting "constructive cooperative relations" between the two countries during the U.S. president's second term.
State-owned newspapers, too, have been laudatory over Bush's reelection victory in a bid to blow over Qian's comments.
The Beijing Youth Daily said it had seen a more mature Bush emerge, commenting: "Today's Bush is no longer the ignorant, arrogant Western cowboy of the past."
-------- europe
EU, India eye counterterrorism
November 06, 2004
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041105-102430-9111r.htm
NEW DELHI - The European Union is set to firm up its strategic partnership with India at a summit meeting at The Hague on Monday, officials said, adding that counterterrorism efforts would also be in focus.
"India is one of the few countries with which the European Union has regular summits and is developing a strategic partnership," the head of the European Commission delegation in India, Francisco da Camara Gomes, told reporters here Thursday.
"The Indian side promises to support most of the proposals that we have put up in a paper as part of building a strategic partnership," Mr. Gomes said.
"The relationship has to be of the same parity, density, quality as the relationship we [the EU] have with the United States, Canada, China, Russia and Japan."
The Netherlands' ambassador in India, Eric Franciscus Charles Niche, told reporters the summit would also discuss counterterrorism.
"The focus has shifted from trade and investment to the political sphere, which deals with issues relating to tackling global terrorism," Mr. Niche said.
The Netherlands holds the six-month rotating presidency of the 25-nation EU until Dec. 31.
A senior European Commission source confirmed in Brussels that the main part of the summit would be devoted to starting up the EU-Indian strategic partnership.
"In doing this we are recognizing that India is gaining in real importance for the EU. Before, we looked more to China, and saw India rather as a leader in the developing world. Now it's an equal partner," the source said on the condition of anonymity.
Among other highlights at the summit, the two sides will sign a 33 million-euro agreement for 1,000 Indian students to pursue master's degree courses in Europe over the next three years.
But the details of Indian participation in Europe's Galileo satellite navigation project are still under discussion and will not be formally decided on Monday, the source said.
The EU hopes that by taking its partnership with India to a higher plane, it can also indirectly encourage progress on India's Kashmir dispute with Pakistan and other regional headaches, such as the Maoist rebellion in Nepal.
"If you encourage India toward modernization ... you push India toward stabilizing its region," the source said.
The two sides will also discuss the re-election of President Bush, the source said. "Both the European Union and India have always been strong defenders of multilateralism."
The summit will also take up cultural exchanges in film, literature and music. "India is very chic in Europe right now, so it's a good time to push ahead on the cultural front," the source said.
The Indian delegation will be led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who will hold talks separately with his Netherlands counterpart Jan Peter Balkenende.
-------- iraq
Fallujah and Those Mass Graves
Washington Post
by Jude Wanniski
November 6, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/wanniski/?articleid=3926
Memo To: David Broder, Washington Post Re: Those Mass Graves
Remember, David, back on Sept. 27, I posted a memo on the margin that I wrote to you, complimenting you on your column about how the news media had been "losing their way"? It had to do with your observation that the major news media were chasing sham stories while not asking serious questions about the most important topics of the day, including the war in Iraq - which both your newspaper and The New York Times acknowledged in price, apologizing for not being more aggressive in the months leading up to the president's decision to go to war. In my note to you, I suggested you look into the long-held conventional wisdom that Saddam Hussein committed genocide, a view largely propagated by Human Rights Watch. The organization estimated that as many as 290,000 Iraqis were killed by Saddam during his reign, with 100,000 Kurds slaughtered in 1988, in the last months of the Iran/Iraq war. Prime Minister Tony Blair at one point said as many as 400,000 Iraqis had been killed by Saddam's regime.
Partly as a result of the HRW assertions, the Bush administration justified its use of force to replace the duly constituted government in Baghdad. The most recent estimates of the dead total 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 60,000 to 80,000 Iraqi military, plus the almost 1,200 Americans who have died during the course of the war. We are currently bombing the 300,000 people of Fallujah in hopes of pacifying the city and may wind up leveling it altogether. Is the sky the limit on what it will take to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq? Don't you wonder?
Meanwhile, this week Human Rights Watch issued its long-awaited conclusive report on Saddam's genocidal record. As far as I know, the major news media have not picked up the report, which is available on the Internet at HRW's Web site. I read about the report in the British press. It turns out that in 19 months HRW's experts have not been able to find the missing 100,000 bodies it said were of Kurds who had been rounded up and trucked south of Kurdistan, machine-gunned to death, and buried in mass graves. In fact, it now blames the U.S. coalition for not securing those mass graves containing smaller numbers of Iraqis or keeping looters from carrying off official Iraqi records of the genocide and the mass graves. You should read the report in its entirety, David, and maybe you will get your editors to take a look too. Here are two pertinent graphs from the summary:
"In the case of both documents and mass graves, U.S.-led coalition forces failed to secure the relevant sites at the time of the overthrow of the former government. They subsequently failed to put in place the professional expertise and assistance necessary to ensure proper classification and exhumation procedures, with the result that key evidentiary materials have been lost or tainted. In the case of mass graves, these failures also have frustrated the goal of enabling families to know the fate of missing relatives. The findings of the report are all the more disturbing against the backdrop of a tribunal established to bring justice for serious past crimes, the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Human Rights Watch has serious concerns that the tribunal is fundamentally flawed and may be incapable of delivering justice.
"The extent of the negligence with which key documentary and forensic evidence has been treated to date is surprising, given that the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi authorities alike knew that trials of Hussein and key Ba'ath government officials would be important landmarks in Iraq's political recovery, that successful trials require solid evidence, and that, as international experience has shown, preserving such trial-ready evidence is a difficult task. Some of the evidence has been destroyed, but it is not too late to assume custody of millions of additional pieces of evidence. Some of this material, if it is given the urgent attention it needs and deserves, may prove critical in the proceedings of the upcoming trials. It will also play an important role as Iraqis attempt to construct an accurate historical record of their traumatic experiences under Ba'ath Party rule."
Do you see what I mean? Saddam Hussein will soon be put on trial for crimes against humanity, and the Iraqi prosecutors will not have the goods on him.
Now that the election is over, maybe you will have more time to devote to this exercise. You should at least give a call to Dr. Stephen Pelletiere, the retired CIA analyst who has never believed in the genocide stories, but has awaited the report of Human Rights Watch to see what it has found. After reading the report in its entirety, he told me they had, as he expected, come up empty: "This claim of HRW that they haven't got evidence that will stand up, because the graves have been compromised, overlooks one key fact: they were claiming that the Ba'ath killed hundreds of thousands. If these graves really contained all the bodies they're supposed to contain, the numbers of dead alone would convict the Ba'ath. If you read the report, they say over and over again they 'believe' such-and-such a grave actually contains thousands of bodies; but all they've been able to find is a few score (at best). I think that's what gives the scam away. They can't produce the hundreds of thousands, or even the tens of thousands they promised they would."
I've tried to get lots and lots of reporters interested in the story, David, but in every case they have a reason why they just can't do it at this time. They've lost their way, as you noted. As the dean of the Washington press corps, you should please help them find it.
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'It's nothing personal. We don't want you here'
Troops face tough task to win over local people
The Guardian
November 6, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1344914,00.html
On any other day but this one, the village of Ahmad al-Hamadi, on the green banks of the Euphrates, would be an idyllic place. In the rich agricultural gardens along the great river, it is easy to understand why this part of Iraq was the original biblical paradise.
Children in brightly coloured clothes play in the fields among fields of potatoes and corn maize. Men in long white dishdashehs climb up from the water's edge carrying fragrant bundles of water cress. But the dozen soldiers of the Black Watch, walking slowly down the road, could be forgiven for seeing this as a hellish place. On Thursday afternoon, eleven of their regiment were hit by a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint across the river a few miles to the east. Three of them, as well as their civilian interpreter, died instantly - the other eight suffered lesser injuries. And now, fewer than 24 hours after the attack, they are on patrol again.
Their helmets are strapped on hooks to their belts - instead they wear tam-o'-shanters, the outsize berets topped by the quivering red feather or "hackle" which are the mark of the Scottish regiments. It is a strange and unnerving feeling to walk alongside them through the lush countryside, always conscious of the possibility of unseen and hostile eyes.
Why are the Black Watch out here so soon, unhelmeted and exposed? The answer is at the heart of the British strategy for its 30-day deployment in this dangerous corner of Iraq.
"It was great shock what happened yesterday, but what we've got to do is take it back to them," says Lieutenant Richard Holmes, leading the patrol. "We've got to get out, get the intelligence, and get feet on the ground, otherwise you'll never get anywhere."
This is the "softly-softly" theory, the "winning of hearts and minds", and yesterday the Black Watch was once again putting it into action.
In practice, it is almost childishly simple. The patrol walks slowly through Ahmad al-Hamadi and, while soldiers carefully scan the countryside around, a Scottish interpreter of Arabic and an officer say hello to local people.
They hand out fliers to passing motorists, bearing the photograph of a friendly Scottish soldier and a conciliatory text in Arabic. Three young men and a shaggy long-legged sheep sit under a tree, and the soldiers go up and talk to them.
They ask them about the price of potatoes. A boy named Saleh complains that he cannot afford to go to school. The soldiers ask gently about the local people who live around here; slowly, the theory goes, this kind of talk will win trust and eventually valuable intelligence about the insurgents lurking in these villages. Then comes the key question: what do the locals think about the British soldiers?
"They are afraid that you might beat them and shout at them," says Saleh. Is that really what people say? asks the soldier. "Yes," comes the answer.
"But they will let you in their houses, if they know that you're not going to hit them."
The British have been out on the ground for little more than a week and plainly, the hearts and minds around here are a long way from being won. Throughout the two hours I spent in Ahmad al-Hamadi, no one offered the Black Watch a rude gesture or word of abuse. They were polite, indifferent, curious at best - until the very end of the patrol, when an older Iraqi man stepped out of his car to talk.
He was an engineer and a fluent speaker of English, educated in the US and he, at least, had no interest in discussing potatoes. Point by point, he makes a simple, but devastating argument: that the Black Watch should not be here.
"Where do you come from?" he asked. "Scotland? So what do you do if someone comes to your land, to occupy your country? This is an Arab country, a Muslim country. How would you feel if someone came and destroyed your homes, killed your families?"
"Why does he sit like that?" said the man, pointing at a soldier crouched with his rifle raised. "It would be better for you to go. If you go no one will attack you. If you stay, they'll come from Falluja and Ramadi and they'll fight you."
The Black Watch thanked him, and politely walked on. About the professionalism and sincerity of the individual British soldiers, there is no doubt. But this is no longer about hard hats or soft hats. The message from Ahmad al-Ramadi yesterday was simply this: it's nothing personal - we don't want you here.
· This pool dispatch was compiled under Ministry of Defence restrictions
-----
Fallujah pounded ahead of assault
November 06, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041105-114300-5466r.htm
U.S. troops and combat aircraft unleashed artillery and precision strikes yesterday on terrorist hide-outs in Fallujah, shaping the battle space for what is designed as a final ground assault to cleanse the renegade city of foreign and Iraqi insurgents.
A combined force of Marines, Army soldiers and Iraqi national guardsmen ringed the city west of Baghdad, blocking exit routes. For weeks, the coalition has allowed residents to leave in an effort to further isolate an estimated 5,000 militants inside the city. Aircraft dropped leaflets urging residents to leave for designated refugee areas.
"The window is closing for a peaceful settlement," Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said at a press conference in Brussels, where he met with European Union leaders. "We intend to liberate the people.... The insurgents and the terrorists are still operating there. We hope they will come to their senses otherwise we will have to bring them to face justice."
Mr. Allawi's comments came after EU leaders responded to his call to build a strategic partnership with Iraq by offering $40 million to fund the fledgling democracy's first elections since Saddam Hussein was ousted.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also weighed in on Iraqi elections yesterday, warning Mr. Allawi, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that an offensive on Fallujah will alienate Iraqis. Sunni clerics already have threatened to boycott the election if Fallujah is attacked.
"The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation," Mr. Annan wrote in the letter to the leaders.
The Bush administration and Mr. Blair said Mr. Allawi will make the call on Fallujah. The administration believes Fallujah must be cleaned out ahead of planned elections in late January.
The United States has lost more than 1,000 service members in combat deaths in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. In Anbar province, which includes the restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, Marines are killed weekly by rocket fire and roadside bombs.
Military sources said a major assault could come within days, as Marines completed training for hitting specific targets inside a sprawling city of 300,000. They were also training Iraqis in the correct battlefield techniques.
"I know you want to wear masks so nobody will recognize you but the terrorists wear masks, too, and Marines shoot people with masks," Reuters quoted Marine Staff Sgt. Anthony Villa as telling the Iraqis.
Inside the city, cleric Hadra al Mohammadiya spoke in a mosque to several hundred anti-coalition fighters.
"We are forced to go into this battle but we were hoping for peaceful solution," the imam said. "The Iraqi government and the American forces want this war to take place."
Retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis yesterday said Mr. Bush's decisive re-election Tuesday gives him the mandate to take the decisive action that is required.
"We'll take casualties. But we'll clean it up. That's the intent. Clean out the environment so we can have elections," he said.
Intelligence reports from inside the town and overhead surveillance have pinpointed where the insurgents live and organize. In recent months, commanders have called in air strikes and artillery barrages. Military sources said yesterday the strikes have killed at least 10 top lieutenants of Abu Musab Zarqawi. The Jordanian-born terrorist has used Fallujah as a base from which to direct an unending series of car-bombings against American and Iraqi troops.
Seven months ago, Marines seemed on the verge of subduing Fallujah. They conducted house-by-house, search-and-destroy missions that killed hundreds of militant. But Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander, halted operations after Iraqi interim government officials objected. The fear was that continuing the killing would prevent the naming of a transition government.
The halt proved costly. Zarqawi and other terrorists used the pause to build up men, arms and money - most of it pouring across the Syrian border.
Now, American and Iraqi troops faced a force probably five times as large as the one they would have battled in April, according to a military source.
It is not clear whether Zarqawi, who has personally beheaded captives, is inside Fallujah. Military sources told The Washington Times this past summer that he left the city and constantly moves from location to location. He takes a hands-on approach, personally greeting newly arrived jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other countries. He then gives the assassins car-bombing missions, usually against Iraqis who are aiding the Americans.
An attack on Fallujah would be the fourth major assault in Iraq since spring and summer to wrest control of insurgent-held territory. Previously, U.S. Army troops and Iraqi guardsmen pacified Najaf in southern Iraq, Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad and Samara north of the city.
Col. Maginnis said Fallujah will be the toughest yet.
"The number in Samara was probably a couple of hundred and they were not as hardened as some of these outsiders are in Fallujah," Col. Maginnis said. "They're spread out more in Fallujah than we'd like. It's going to be a little more difficult to track them down."
French President Jacques Chirac - who opposed the Iraq war - did not attend yesterday's EU meeting with Mr. Allawi, but said he was not snubbing Iraq's prime minister. At the time of the meeting, Mr. Chirac was flying to the United Arab Emirates to meet with its new leader.
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Battle Near, Iraqi Sunnis Make Offer
Major Shift Includes New Interest in Vote
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29157-2004Nov5?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Nov. 5 -- As Marines step up preparations for military offensives on two major Iraqi cities, a number of Sunni Muslim leaders are forwarding a plan to establish the rule of law in those areas through peaceful means, with the promise of reducing the insurgency across a large swath of the country.
Some of the groups leading the bid have encouraged violent resistance in central, western and northern Iraq. The groups say they will withdraw their support for violence if Iraq's interim government can reassure Sunni leaders wary of national elections, which are scheduled for the end of January.
The Sunnis have proposed six measures, including a demand that U.S. forces remain confined to bases in the month before balloting. Such an ambitious demand, which some advocates acknowledge is not likely to be met and may be open to negotiation, represents a dramatic shift by Sunni groups opposed to the U.S. operation in Iraq.
Until now, groups such as the Association of Muslim Scholars, which supports the new proposal, had insisted that no election could be considered legitimate until Western troops left Iraq. The association has repeatedly threatened to call for an election boycott through the loudspeakers of Iraq's Sunni mosques, which the association represents.
"We took an initiative regarding the elections. It is being welcomed by the people on the boycott side," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a Baghdad University political science professor who is spokesman for the initiative. "They said that if such agreements could be met by the Americans, they could change to participation."
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad offered no reaction to the proposal, which it received this week. A Western diplomat emphasized that any decision lay with Iraq's interim government.
In separate interviews, senior U.S. and Iraqi officials were privately skeptical of the overture and indicated it was unlikely to avert a military offensive on Fallujah and Ramadi, which commanders say could begin at any time.
"They don't seem to get it. The monopoly of power is over," said a senior Iraqi government official, referring to former President Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. "One wonders how representative these elements are of the mainstream Sunni population. They may represent nostalgia for the past, but for sure no realistic vision for the future."
Some former officials with experience in Iraq called the Sunni proposal a potential breakthrough that could avert not only an assault on Fallujah but also a violent aftermath, when insurgents might take the fight elsewhere.
"Most of what we've learned about insurgencies is that you don't defeat one through purely military means," said Larry Diamond, who served in the U.S.-led occupation authority. "When you try to do that, you may win the battle but lose the war. The insurgency in the Sunni heartland is now quite broad-based, and I don't think we're going to defeat the insurgency in this part of the country through purely military means. I think we're looking at a protracted insurgency which will get worse if we go through with elections" that many Sunnis boycott.
"These groups," Diamond said, "have to be given evidence that it's in their interests to participate in the electoral process."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a letter to President Bush disclosed Friday, warned that an assault on Fallujah "would be very disruptive of Iraq's political transition."
"Persuading elements who are currently alienated from, or skeptical about, the transition process to compete politically is key to creating a political and security context that will inspire confidence among all Iraqis," Annan wrote.
Iraqi and American officials also cite the impending election as a reason to take military action. Fallujah has been controlled by insurgents since April. They also move freely in Ramadi, the provincial capital, 30 miles to the west. In most of the rest of the country, voter registration began this week, and officials say the legitimacy of an ostensibly nationwide ballot will be undermined if residents of the Sunni Triangle area cannot take part.
Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, geographically concentrated in the country's midsection, was favored under Hussein. But Sunnis were markedly under-represented on the Governing Council put in place by the U.S.-led occupation and in the interim government that took power from the council in late June.
Elections could correct the imbalance, but many observers note that the country's majority Shiite Muslim population -- long disenfranchised and eager to claim elected office -- is better organized, larger, and pressing every advantage. On Thursday, the electoral commission announced that Iraqis who live overseas will be allowed to vote. The controversial decision is seen as benefiting Shiites who fled into exile under Hussein.
Nadhmi, the professor, emphasized that the groups behind the overture, who gathered under the umbrella of the Iraqi National Founding Conference, include Shiites and Christians. But the bulk of the conference represents Sunni interests. They include the Iraqi Nationalist Party, which has pan-Arab roots; the Democratic Reform Party, dominated by members of Hussein's Baath Party exiled to Syria; and the Association of Muslim Scholars, which claims to represent every Sunni mosque in Iraq and has frequently endorsed calls for resistance.
"This initiative is very significant," said an official involved in establishing the transitional government, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. "They're no longer saying, 'We're not participating because the country is occupied.' They're saying, 'The government is not right. The only way we can make it right is by elections.'
"If you look at their demands, they're not impossible. They are things that can be discussed."
Several of the demands are grounded in skepticism about Iraq's newly minted election commission, a low-profile agency established by U.S. and U.N. officials. The Sunni group says it wants the panel reconstituted with prominent Iraqi judges "known for their honesty," and it wants the panel's work supervised by election monitors from other Arab and Islamic countries.
The group also wants the repeal of election regulations barring senior Baathists from standing for office, saying international norms call for bans only on people convicted of crimes. Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, has reversed some elements of the "de-Baathification" program put in place by L. Paul Bremer, the administrator of the U.S.-led occupation authority, but the bar on candidacy remains.
"There's a possibility of a Baathist slate," conceded Diamond, the former occupation official. "Now, these are nasty people. But I'd rather have them running peacefully in the election and winning a few seats in parliament than paying people to plant [roadside bombs] for our troops."
Most difficult for Iraqi and U.S. officials is the demand that American and other foreign forces remain outside major cities for the month of January. Insecurity is a profound problem across Iraq, and Iraqi police and other forces have not proven themselves capable of bringing certain areas under control.
The picture is further complicated by the presence of foreign fighters intent on carrying out violent strikes. Despite strains with Iraqi insurgents motivated by nationalism, Fallujah residents have said the foreign fighters continue to blend among the indigenous resistance. Negotiations between Allawi's government and Fallujah leaders broke down over the city's inability or refusal to eject the fighters.
One advocate of the new initiative said Iraqi Sunnis would persuade the foreigners to leave, though it may take time. He said attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces would dissipate sooner if significant numbers of former Baathists feel they have a stake in the "new Iraq."
"Everyone agrees they are the spinal cord of the insurgency, and these groups have moral authority over them," said the official, who was formerly involved in Iraq.
Diamond acknowledged the proposal carried risks and may arrive too late to dissuade U.S. and Iraqi officials "who think it's time to go in and kick some butt."
But he added, "If there's a chance that this could be the beginning of political transformation that could change the situation on the ground, I think we've got to take it. Especially since many of the foreign fighters are said to have left Fallujah."
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Iraqi Rules for Candidacy Spur Some U.S. Concern
U.N. Also Worries Pressure May Squelch Sunnis
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29081-2004Nov5.html
To run for a seat in the Iraqi National Assembly in the elections scheduled for January, candidates must meet conditions set by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq that are far more severe than any requirements for election to the U.S. Congress or most other elected bodies in this country.
For example, candidates must have "at least a secondary school diploma or equivalent," a "good reputation" and not been convicted of "a crime involving moral turpitude," according to the regulations of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI). In addition, candidates cannot have been a member of Saddam Hussein's secret police, nor "contributed to or participated in the persecution of citizens," nor have made money "in an illegitimate manner at the expense of the homeland and public finance."
The regulations are based on sections of the Transition Administrative Law (TAL), drafted under the direction of then-Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority administrator, L. Paul Bremer III. They have raised concerns among U.N. and U.S. officials that Iraq's interim government may try to eliminate candidates through pressure on the electoral commission, whose members were selected by the United Nations but approved by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
In an attempt to prevent former officials of Hussein's Baath Party from running, no candidate will be certified who had been in the party "with the rank of Division member or higher," a level that one former senior CIA official said was "not high and would cover many schoolteachers and college professors." In addition, a candidate who was a former party member will have to sign a document renouncing the party, disavowing all past links and swearing that he or she has no current "dealings or connection" with Baathist organizations.
The rules create "a real rat's nest to unravel," the former CIA official said, "and clearly will not bring Sunnis into the process unless it is waived." Officials fear that if the Sunnis, who once ruled Iraq and are now at the heart of the insurgency, are not represented in the new assembly, their militant leaders will find it easier to recruit new fighters.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in Middle East affairs, said he expects the rules to be applied "in a more ad hoc way" than spelled out in the TAL. The limitations on former Baath Party members are "Chalabi rules," Cole said, a reference to Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile leader who as a member of the Iraqi Governing Council helped develop rules to keep former Baathists from working in the new Iraqi government.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, "has been rehabilitating Baathists," Cole said, noting that many former party members, such as Allawi himself, "broke with Saddam and now are being brought back."
A senior United Nations official helping to manage the electoral process said yesterday in a telephone interview from New York that the Iraqi commission has yet to decide how to enforce the certification standards.
Under current plans, candidates will sign a declaration that they meet the eligibility criteria. But before the electoral commission certifies them, their names will be published around the country.
"The IECI won't be able to investigate the information," the U.N. official said, because there will be hundreds of candidates. "If there are objections to a candidate," the official said, "the commission is still writing the regulations as to how they will be adjudicated and challenges settled."
The candidate certification period is already underway and will continue through mid-December, the U.N. official said. At a news conference yesterday, Carina Perelli, director of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division, said that seven lists of candidates had been registered "and more than 180 forms [for] registration of lists have been distributed at the request of the parties."
While most public attention has been focused on the complications of registering Iraqi voters at home and abroad, little attention has been paid to how the election for the 275 seats in the National Assembly will be held. That body will not just pass laws, but also primarily write a new Iraqi constitution.
Any individual can collect 500 signatures of Iraqis entitled to vote and take that to the commission to be certified as a candidate. More likely are to be lists of candidates put together by parties or other groups. But each list must by law contain a minimum of the names of 12 candidates.
Each individual candidate or list of candidates will be voted on nationwide. And each voter will have only one vote, whether for an individual or for a list of individuals.
To guarantee that women are represented in the assembly, one of every three candidates on a party list must be a woman. After the voting, seats will be awarded proportionately to the votes a candidate or party list received.
Perelli told reporters in June that a successful candidate would "probably have to get at least 27,000 votes to be elected." Yesterday, reporters were told that it may take as many as 50,000 votes to be elected, based on the number now expected to vote.
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Annan's Warning On Fallujah Dismissed
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29094-2004Nov5.html
NEW YORK, Nov. 5 -- The United States, Britain and Iraq on Friday angrily dismissed a warning from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that a military offensive in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah could jeopardize the credibility of upcoming elections in Iraq.
In letters dated Oct. 31 and addressed to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and interim Iraqi leader Ayad Allawi, Annan said using military force against insurgents in the city would further alienate Sunni Muslims already feeling left out of a political process orchestrated largely by Washington.
"I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq's political transition," Annan wrote to the three leaders.
"I also worry about the negative impact that major military assaults, in which the main burden seems bound to be borne by American forces, are likely to have on the prospects for encouraging a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process, including in the elections."
Annan's comments and criticism drew anger and frustration from U.S., British and Iraqi officials.
"I don't know what pressure he has to bear on the insurgents," Allawi said in an interview with the BBC. "If he can stop the insurgents from inflicting damage and killing the Iraqis, then he's welcome -- we will do whatever he wants."
Annan pushed for a diplomatic, rather than a military, solution in Fallujah. But Allawi said the "window is closing" for diplomacy, and within hours U.S. warplanes pounded the heavily populated city while Marines and Iraqi troops hovered on the outskirts.
Asked about Annan's concerns Friday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "Frankly, we differ."
Boucher added: "The Iraqi government has made very clear that they do have a strategy for resolving the problems of these towns like Fallujah. It's a strategy that has worked in some cases already, in Najaf and Samarra and a few other places. It's a strategy of reaching out politically to local leaders, of reasserting Iraqi government control and of moving militarily where that needs to be done, Iraqis and coalition forces together."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the letter with Annan in a weekend phone call, and the U.N. chief met privately on Monday with John C. Danforth, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Privately, Bush administration officials said they were livid about the letter, which was sent two days before the U.S. presidential election.
U.N. officials said Annan was sensitive to the timing and concealed his written concerns from many of his staff members. The contents of the letters were made public Friday in an article in the Los Angeles Times.
The United Nations is helping Iraq prepare for elections, and U.N. officials said Friday in New York that 85 percent of the registration centers have been set up and that its eight election workers in Iraq will be joined by 17 more before the January vote.
The planned election has been a key goal of the Bush administration, which has insisted, despite continual violence and insecurity throughout the country, that voting will proceed as scheduled. Washington and London have pushed Annan to beef up the U.N. presence in the country, but humanitarian staff members in the organization have been reluctant to go to Iraq, mostly because of the violence but also because of resentment over a war that was conducted without U.N. approval.
Relations between Washington and the United Nations have been at an all-time low since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In August, the United Nations lost one of its top envoys and nearly two dozen staff members when insurgents bombed U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. Since then, U.N. staffers have fought attempts by Annan to send them back to the country while the insurgency continues.
But Allawi and his U.S. and British backers argue that the only way to restore security in time for the election is by fighting the insurgency.
The Iraqi leader, who spent years on the CIA payroll, is a member of the country's Shiite majority and faces strong opposition to the offensive from the country's Sunnis. The Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of Sunni clerics, threatened to sit out the election and mount a nationwide campaign against the vote.
Those threats, along with concern for civilian casualties, prompted Annan's letter.
"Ultimately, the problem of insecurity can only be addressed through dialogue and an inclusive political process," he wrote.
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BATTLE PLANS
All Sides Prepare for American Attack on Falluja
November 6, 2004
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS and JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/international/middleeast/06falluja.html?pagewanted=all
NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 5 - American armored vehicles roared through the villages surrounding Falluja, the western town at the heart of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, on Friday as warplanes pounded rebel positions and ground forces ratcheted up their preparations for what appeared to be an imminent assault on the city.
Within Falluja, insurgents who were hiding themselves by day among a dwindling and embittered populace set up a defensive perimeter around the city and said they would defeat the Americans or die in a cause they called just.
Marines gathering outside the city practiced house-to-house fighting, while some American crews fitted their armored vehicles with front-loading shovels designed to unearth explosives buried in the roads on the way in. Marines fired artillery rounds throughout the day and night on positions around the city.
"We are going to rid the city of insurgents," said Lt. Col. Gary Brandl, a battalion commander in charge of about 800 marines at a base outside the city. "If they do fight, we will kill them."
Military intelligence officials say as many as 75 to 80 percent of the city's 250,000 residents have fled. That estimate was consistent with reports from inside Falluja.
As battle preparations went forward, top American commanders in Iraq and senior Bush administration officials in Washington were conducting final reviews of their own.
At the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., President Bush was briefed Friday morning on the battle plans in a videoconference with his top national security advisers to discuss Iraq.
American officials said the precise timing was being left to American commanders in the field and to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq. "People here are asking, 'What about this issue?' or 'Have you thought about that?' But otherwise, they're leaving the planning up to the people on the ground," said a senior military officer in Washington.
Visiting European Union leaders in Brussels on Friday, Dr. Allawi reiterated his warning that "the window is really closing" on chances for a peaceful settlement of the standoff. Negotiators for the two sides have not met in more than a week.
At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan confirmed that he had formally expressed concern about the effects any invasion of Falluja would have on stability in the country ahead of elections scheduled for January. His concerns could cloud prospects for a major United Nations role in Iraq in the elections and afterward.
Dr. Allawi and American officials have insisted that they must reassert control over Falluja quickly in order to pave the way for the elections. Falluja lies squarely within a region of the country dominated by Sunni Arabs, a minority group whose participation in the elections is considered crucial if the outcome is to be accepted as legitimate. Favored under Saddam Hussein's rule, disenfranchised Sunnis are now leading the increasingly deadly insurgency.
Outside the city, the Americans were setting up military checkpoints to choke off access roads. Warplanes conducted at least five major airstrikes on Friday.
Insurgents inside the city continued their own preparations, filtering through waning crowds of ordinary people in the markets and on the streets.
A man who had been encountered at a fortified position on the perimeter of the city a few days before was seen downtown on Friday morning wearing a T-shirt and pants from a track suit. He was driving a motorcycle and carrying a huge bag of clips for an automatic rifle.
The man, who identified himself as Abu Muhammad, said the fighters were more numerous and better prepared than the last time they battled the Americans, in April. "We trust in God," he said, explaining why he thought that the insurgents were so strong. "We have two choices - victory or martyrdom."
Beyond those sentiments, the insurgents appear to have the benefit of some fairly sophisticated military advice. They have built a layered perimeter with at least one inner fortified ring that would give them a place to retreat to should the outer ring be breached.
American commanders in Iraq have expressed confidence they could complete their assault in a matter of days, but a senior officer said Friday that planners had no sure way of knowing how long insurgents would hold out. "Right now, they're hoping it doesn't go much longer than a week," the officer said.
Meanwhile, the insurgents continued with their deadly attacks. An American soldier was killed and five were wounded in an attack on a base near Falluja on Friday, the United States military reported. The injuries were said to be "the result of an indirect fire attack," a term the military generally reserves for mortars or rockets.
Two marines were killed during security operations around Ramadi, west of Falluja, on Thursday, while one soldier in the First Infantry Division died and another was wounded in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, when an improvised bomb exploded near their vehicle.
[A group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an ally of Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility on Saturday for a car bombing that killed three British troops south of Baghdad on Thursday, Reuters reported. The men were among about 850 British soldiers sent to free up American forces for the attack on Falluja. Also on Saturday, two car bombs exploded in the town of Samarra north of Baghdad, killing at least 19 people and wounding at least 23, police said.]
As preparations for the battle of Falluja sped forward, there were warnings that it could have devastating consequences far from the small piece of turf at issue.
The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Secretary General Annan of the United Nations had sent a letter to the governments of Britain, Iraq and the United States expressing concern that continued military attacks on the rebel-held city would alienate people and disrupt elections. The United Nations did not release the text of the letter and, in a corridor conversation with reporters, Mr. Annan confirmed its existence but declined to discuss it.
Asked about United Nations worries about the effect on the elections of the American-led military assault on Falluja, Kieran Prendergast, the under secretary for political affairs, said, "It is important to understand that elections are not a stand-alone event, that the context in which they are held is very important if they are to have the effect of promoting stability in Iraq."
American military officials said the exact timing of any attack on Falluja hinged on a range of factors. Officials in Washington said Dr. Allawi wanted more time to discuss with his cabinet, as well as religious and tribal leaders, the political and military ramifications of an American-led offensive. Some Sunni leaders have appealed to the interim government to call off any attack.
Military officials said the remaining residents in Falluja needed a last warning to leave the city before any assault began.
The chief Marine intelligence officer in Iraq, Col. Ronald S. Makuta, gave this description in an e-mail message from his headquarters at Camp Falluja, three miles east of the city: "Those remaining fall under the categories of not having enough money to move out or simply do not want to leave their homes and possessions for fear that these will be gutted and or robbed by the foreign fighters, local insurgents, and criminals. Insurgents continue to wage a brutal campaign of murder, assassination, terror, kidnapping, coercion, and intimidation. The criminal content has also taken advantage of the lawlessness in the city, and are pursuing similar means."
The operation is shaping up to be the largest since the American invasion of the country 20 months ago. A senior military officer said that roughly 25,000 American and Iraqi troops were surrounding Falluja and Ramadi and the corridor between the two cities. Another senior military official said that from 10,000 to 15,000 of those troops were immediately around Falluja. They face an Iraqi insurgent force in the city that Colonel Brandl estimated at a few thousand fighters.
It is all intended to set right the disastrous events of April, when a large force of marines attacked the city after the killing and mutilation of four American contractors there. Though the Americans were making steady progress in the city center, they were forced to halt their attacks when Iraqi leaders became unnerved over reports, largely unconfirmed, that hundreds of civilians had been killed there.
That time, the fighting in Falluja helped fuel armed uprisings in other parts of the country against the American presence here.
Iraqi leaders and American commanders say they are worried about similar risings now, particularly in volatile cities like Mosul, but they say that circumstances have shifted markedly since then. This time, with the American occupation formally over, Iraqi leaders are in charge and willing to take some of the political heat for the operations.
American soldiers preparing to move into the city say they expect to find homemade bombs along roads and fortified positions around the city's perimeter. The Americans said they were preparing for close-quarters urban fighting.
Thousands of Iraqi troops have moved into position with their American counterparts and are expected to take part. In the pattern set in similar operations in Najaf and Samarra, American soldiers are to do most of the fighting on the way in, clearing the way for the Iraqi security forces to take control once the insurgents are defeated. With this method, Iraqi and American leaders hope for the best of both worlds: American muscle and an Iraqi face.
The performance of the Iraqi security forces is viewed as crucial to the success or failure of the mission in Falluja. In April, entire units of the Iraqi police and national guard disintegrated before uprisings in Falluja and southern Iraq.
Now, American commanders say they have higher hopes, particularly because of the intensive training that Iraqi units have received.
Dexter Filkins reported from near Falluja for this article, and James Glanz from Baghdad. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Falluja, and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.
-------- israel / palestine
Five Palestinians Killed by Israeli Troops
November 6, 2004
By MOHAMMED BALLAS
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JENIN, West Bank (AP) -- Five Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed Saturday in West Bank and Gaza Strip violence, the army and Palestinian sources said.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed 14-year-old Ala Samara during a clash in the West Bank town of Jenin.
Palestinian residents and hospital officials said Samara was unarmed and was standing near a group of stone-throwing youths when troops shot him.
Israeli military officials said the youths threw a firebomb at the troops, and soldiers fired at a youth who was about to throw a second firebomb.
The latest violence erupted as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 75, lay in a coma in a Paris hospital fighting for his life.
Uncertainty surrounded Arafat's condition, and Palestinian officials held a series of meetings to try to consolidate power in case the ailing leader dies.
Israel has been operating for two weeks in Jenin, located in the northern West Bank, searching for weapons and Palestinian militants.
Earlier Saturday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Islamic Jihad militants who tried to infiltrate a Gaza Strip settlement.
The militants, armed with explosives and machineguns, crossed through an unauthorized area and approached the Gadid settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said.
A gunbattle erupted between the troops and the militants. An Israeli aircraft fired a missile at the militants, killing them, the army said.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attempted infiltration. The group said a third fighter escaped.
In the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, two Palestinian militants were killed and a third was seriously wounded when their car exploded.
The men were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group linked to Arafat's Fatah group, residents said.
During four years of fighting, many militants have died accidentally while preparing attacks on Israel.
Israeli military sources said troops weren't in the area at the time of the explosion.
--------
Arafat on brink sparks burial debate
November 06, 2004
By Karin Laub
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041105-111154-7175r.htm
JERUSALEM - Israel is determined to keep Yasser Arafat out of Jerusalem even in death, with one Cabinet minister saying yesterday that the holy city is reserved for the burial of Jewish kings, "not Arab terrorists."
Palestinian officials said publicly that it is inappropriate to talk about funeral arrangements as long as their 75-year-old leader clings to life at a Paris hospital. A hospital spokesman said that Mr. Arafat was in a coma and "has not gotten worse."
One official said Palestinian leaders are hoping to enlist international support for a burial at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam's third-holiest shrine, which was built on the ruins of the biblical Jewish temples.
The top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem weighed in for the first time yesterday, saying Mr. Arafat requested burial near Al Aqsa when the two met four months ago. The comments by the mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrima Sabri, marked the first official comment on Mr. Arafat's burial wishes.
The way the dispute is resolved could signal how Israel and the emerging Palestinian leadership - Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and his predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas - will get along in the future.
Mr. Arafat is reviled by many Israelis, and seeing him interred near Judaism's holiest site would draw public outrage. Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said Mr. Arafat "will not be buried in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists."
His blunt remarks came despite Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's order to government officials to keep a low profile and avoid antagonizing the Palestinians.
However, Mr. Sharon himself told his Cabinet last week that he would not permit Mr. Arafat, his longtime nemesis, to be buried in Jerusalem.
It is not clear whether Mr. Arafat has left a written will, and Mr. Sabri said he is not aware of one.
He said the Palestinian leader told him "he has a desire to be buried in Jerusalem, near the Al Aqsa Mosque."
Israeli security officials said Gaza was the only burial option. Even a compromise initially floated by army planners - interment in the West Bank suburb of Abu Dis, which offers a view of Al Aqsa - has since been ruled out by the military.
Army officials also oppose burial elsewhere in the West Bank, in part because Palestinian security forces would have trouble protecting the large numbers of foreign dignitaries expected for the event.
Israeli military officials said they would ease travel restrictions on Palestinians during the funeral, but if the burial is in Gaza, only officials - and not the general public - will be allowed to travel there from the West Bank to attend. If the funeral is in Ramallah, the Palestinian public will be allowed to participate, but will have to endure rigorous checks at roadblocks, the officials said.
Rival Palestinian groups, including Islamic militants, gathered yesterday in Gaza in a show of unity they hoped would prevent the region from spiraling into further violence in the face of Mr. Arafat's dire condition.
Mr. Arafat's clan, the Al-Kidwas, are originally from Gaza, though the Palestinian leader grew up in Jerusalem and Cairo. The family has a small plot of 25-to-30 graves in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. The overgrown patch is in the middle of a busy vegetable market and would not be considered appropriate.
Other burial options include a seaside plot next to his old headquarters in Gaza City, or Gaza City's "martyrs' cemetery" east of the city, close to Israel.
--------
With Arafat in Coma, Near Death, Conflict Mounts Over Burial Site
Israelis Say Jerusalem Not an Option for Palestinian Leader
By Glenn Frankel and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29158-2004Nov5.html
PARIS, Nov. 5 -- Palestinian officials acknowledged Friday that Yasser Arafat was in a coma and struggling to survive, while Israeli officials issued blunt warnings that they would not allow the Palestinian leader to be buried in or near the disputed capital of Jerusalem.
"Arafat is in a critical state between life and death," Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to France, told RTL radio here, in the first official acknowledgement that Arafat, 75, was hovering near death.
"I assure you that he is not brain dead," she added. "He is in a coma. We are not sure what type. But it is a reversible coma." Senior Israeli officials said Arafat was being kept alive by life-support devices.
Later Friday evening, a French medical spokesman told reporters gathered outside the Percy military hospital in Clamart, a southwestern suburb of Paris, that Arafat was in "stable" condition and "has not gotten worse." The spokesman, Christian Estripeau, refused to elaborate, citing the need to "fully respect the privacy that the family has requested."
With death an imminent possibility, Israeli and Palestinian officials began arguing over questions of where to lay to rest the man who for four decades has been the embodiment of the bitter quest for Palestinian statehood.
People close to Arafat said his wish was to be buried in Jerusalem; senior Israel officials insisted he would not be buried in "greater Jerusalem," a term that encompasses the city and the neighborhoods immediately surrounding it. Some said the only place that would be acceptable was in the Gaza Strip, where Arafat's family has a burial plot outside the southern city of Khan Younis.
Officials on both sides said no discussions on the issue were underway, contradicting news reports that American and French diplomats were acting as intermediaries in private talks. Neither the U.S. Embassy here nor the office of President Jacques Chirac would discuss the matter.
But Israeli and Palestinian officials did trade statements on the issue. Palestinians "will choose where to bury him, but he will not be buried in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists," Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid told Associated Press Television News.
Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said:
"He will not be buried in greater Jerusalem, in the same manner that if Osama bin Laden were killed, he would not be buried in Arlington National Cemetery."
Saeb Erekat, a member of the Palestinian cabinet, the chief negotiator with Israel and a longtime Arafat confidant, said Arafat had "always dreamed about Jerusalem" as his burial place. "The Israelis should be more sensitive to this issue," he said.
The statements punctuated another day in which rumors swirled in Paris, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza over Arafat's condition. Early in the day, sources reported that Suha Arafat, his wife, was on the verge of giving her consent to take him off the respirator that has maintained his breathing since Wednesday, when he first slipped into unconsciousness. But as the day wore on, there was no announcement of any such move.
In her radio interview Friday morning, Shahid, the Palestinian envoy, suggested Arafat had slipped into a coma after he was put under anesthesia Wednesday for medical tests, including internal examinations and a biopsy of his spinal cord. But medical experts said it was unlikely that medication had caused Arafat's coma and suggested it was far more likely that a deterioration in his condition had caused the coma.
Arafat was airlifted to the French hospital a week ago from his battle-scarred compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah after complaining for two weeks of nausea, stomach cramps and other symptoms. Palestinian officials at first attributed his discomfort to intestinal flu but later conceded his condition was more serious. Doctors have ruled out stomach cancer and leukemia but have not issued a definitive diagnosis.
Only three Palestinians -- Suha Arafat; Nasser Kidwa, who is Arafat's nephew and a Palestinian observer at the United Nations; and Ramzi Khoury, who is Arafat's longtime chief of staff -- are said to have regular access to the patient's bedside, and they have released no statements. In the information vacuum, a Palestinian and Israeli rumor mill has been working overtime.
"We all know that clinically he is dead, but we won't interfere with internal Palestinian affairs," said the Israeli justice minister, Lapid, who cited no source for his claim. "They'll announce his death when they find it proper."
Arafat has not named a successor, and his illness has plunged Palestinians into anxiety over who will take his place if he dies and how the new leadership will prevent an outbreak of violence among armed factions that have struggled for supremacy with each other as well as with the Israeli army.
Two of Arafat's longtime colleagues, Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the former prime minister, have been chosen to run a collective leadership group in an attempt to maintain internal peace.
Anderson reported from Jerusalem. Special correspondent Maria Gabriella Bonetti in Clamart contributed to this report.
-------- pacific
U.S. tightens military alliance
November 06, 2004
By Nick Squires
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041105-102431-1797r.htm
SYDNEY, Australia - The United States will be allowed to test smart bombs and other cutting-edge military technology in Australia in a further sign of the deepening alliance between the two Iraq war allies.
Under the plan, the U.S. military will experiment with self-guided smart bombs and conduct live bombing raids in three huge training areas in Australia's sparsely populated tropical north.
Prime Minister John Howard is one of the staunchest allies of President Bush, having committed Australian troops to U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan and last year's invasion of Iraq, despite domestic opposition.
Details of the plan were disclosed by Ross Babbage, an Australian former defense official who has just returned from briefings in Washington.
Although the Australian government played down the reports, they are in keeping with an agreement signed in July to allow the American military access to training facilities in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
The base at Shoalwater Bay, Queensland, will be upgraded to hold a big exercise in 2007, with more than 20,000 U.S. troops engaged in live bombing raids, amphibious landings and war games, Mr. Babbage said.
"The Americans and our government are putting more meat on the bones of the alliance," he said. "In Washington, what they were saying was that when it comes to the cutting edge, you guys and the Brits are who we can work with."
Australia, which has a modest military capability, sees the United States as a guarantor of its security in the event of conflict in Southeast Asia.
There is already opposition to the plan. The prime minister of Queensland, Peter Beattie, gave warning that the exercises could make Australia more of a terrorist target.
-------- space
US ready to put weapons in space
Defence expert says America is likely to ignore treaty ban
The Guardian
Mark Townsend
November 7, 2004
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1345380,00.html
America has begun preparing its next military objective - space. Documents reveal that the US Air Force has for the first time adopted a doctrine to establish 'space superiority'.
The new doctrine means that pre-emptive strikes against enemy satellites would become 'crucial steps in any military operation'. This week defence experts will attend a conference in London amid warnings that President Bush's re-election will pave the way to the arming of space.
Internal USAF documents reveal that seizing control of the 'final frontier' is deemed essential for modern warfare. Counterspace Operations reveals that destroying enemy satellites would improve the chance of victory. It states: 'Space superiority provides freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack. Space and air superiority are crucial first steps in any military operation.'
Theresa Hitchens, vice-president of a Washington-based independent think-tank, the Centre for Defence Information, said: 'These documents show that they are taking space control seriously.'
This week's meeting, held by the British-American Security Information Council (Basic), will also discuss whether Britain can restrain a US administration intent on strategic control of space.
Next year's budget for the US Missile Defence Agency includes funding for research into the development of 'space-based interceptors'. Although the funding allocated to develop lightweight ballistic missile parts is only £7.5m, further details have emerged of a more ambitious programme to site weapons in space.
Plans for a 'thin constellation of three to six spacecraft' in orbit, which would target enemy missiles as they took off or landed, are planned, according to Hitchens. The document, said Hitchens, signals that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which outlaws the use of weapons in orbit, will be ignored.
Of equal concern to some UK defence experts is Britain's agreement in principle to station US interceptor missiles at RAF Fylingdales, North Yorkshire. Participation in the missile defence programme means that Britain is already 'locked into' a programme that could ultimately include space warfare, say those who are monitoring developments.
'If the UK government tries to argue that it is participating in missile defence, but not in the weaponisation of space, either officials have been duped or they are being disingenuous,' said Hitchens.
Suggestions of a deepening relationship between Britain and America over missile defence surfaced again last week. A parliamentary statement from Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to Labour MP Llew Smith conceded that the MoD has sent two experts to work at the US Missile Defence Agency. Another two will be sent next year.
In a separate debate last week, defence minister Lord Bach admitted that the US was encouraging Britain to become involved in its missile programme. 'The US has offered to extend coverage and make missile defence capabilities available to the UK and other allies, should we require them,' he said.
--------
U.S. Air Force launches a GPS satellite
November 06, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041106-122034-2235r.htm
Cape Canaveral, FL, Nov. 6 -- The U.S. Air Force launched a global positioning system satellite Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
It was the 12th successful launch of the new-generation GPS IIR spacecraft. The satellite -- designated GPS IIR-13 and built by Lockheed Martin -- will join 29 other operational GPS satellites now in orbit.
"With the successful launch of GPS IIR-13, the world-wide navigation system for both military and civil users is more robust than ever," said Dave Podlesney of the Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Valley Forge, Pa.
"We take great pride in our partnership with the Air Force in carrying out the important mission of the GPS system and look forward to providing significantly improved positioning capabilities as we transition to the modernized fleet of IIR spacecraft."
-------- spies
C.I.A. Is Said to Choose a No. 3
November 6, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/06intel.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, has chosen a veteran administrative officer with extensive overseas experience for the C.I.A.'s No. 3 post, intelligence officials said Friday.
The officer has served in five overseas posts, providing logistical support to intelligence gathering and covert operations, the officials said. They said that his name could not be disclosed immediately, because he remained under cover, but that it would be made known soon.
Mr. Goss's decision to install an insider in the post, that of executive director, the agency's day-to-day manager, comes after his first choice, Michael V. Kostiw, a former House staff member, withdrew from consideration. The choice of Mr. Kostiw had been criticized by former intelligence officials, who questioned the circumstances under which he resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1980's.
People familiar with that episode have said the resignation, which occurred while Mr. Kostiw was on administrative leave, involved a shoplifting case. In announcing last month that he would not be executive director, he said, "Allegations about my past would be a distraction from the critical work the director of central intelligence needs to focus on.''
The decision to appoint the logistics specialist as executive director was first reported in Friday's issue of The Washington Post. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment on it, saying the agency had nothing to announce publicly.
But an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity described the new executive director as a 22-year veteran of the C.I.A. who had worked primarily within a division known as the Office of Global Support. The new official succeeds A. B. Krongard, former chairman and chief executive of the investment banking concern Alex. Brown, who was named to the post in 2001 by George J. Tenet, then the director. Mr. Goss, confirmed by the Senate in September, soon removed Mr. Krongard in the course of putting together a new management team.
The intelligence official who described Mr. Krongard's successor said he was someone who had "a lot of field experience" and had "supported all kinds of operations" during his career at the agency.
--------
Russian Jury Convicts Scientist in His Retrial
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29207-2004Nov5.html
MOSCOW, Nov. 5 -- A jury in Siberia found a Russian scientist guilty Friday of illegally passing documents to China, the latest ruling in a lengthy case in which the defendant was first acquitted, then ordered retried.
In proceedings closely monitored both by human rights groups and the country's security services, Valentin Danilov, 53, director of a research center at Krasnoyarsk State Technical University, was convicted of fraud for providing aerospace technology to a Chinese company.
Valentin Danilov is accused of giving documents to China.
A judge will now decide if the fraud amounts to espionage. Under Russian law, a jury cannot hear classified information and therefore cannot determine whether Danilov is guilty of spying. Sentencing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Danilov was arrested in early 2001 and spent 19 months in prison before being acquitted by a jury in December. The verdict sparked outrage among some officials in the security services and was later overturned by the Supreme Court, which ordered a new trial.
Danilov argued in both trials that he was working only from open sources and that he had official clearance for his work on satellites with the Chinese.
In April, another scientist, Igor Sutyagin, a scholar at the U.S.A.-Canada Institute in Moscow, received a 15-year sentence for selling information to a British company. Sutyagin also argued that his information was in the public domain, but prosecutors maintained that the British firm was a front for the CIA.
Danilov said in a radio interview Friday that in the second trial, held in the city of Krasnoyarsk, his attorney was barred from describing exactly what material was given to the Chinese company, leaving the jury with the choice of believing either him or the state on the nature of the documents that are at the center of the case.
"All that the jury ruled on was that I was guilty of transferring information," Danilov told the Echo Moskvy radio. "But it did not make a ruling on what kind of information I actually passed on."
Human rights groups have charged that the Danilov case is part of a pattern of questionable prosecutions of environmentalists, scientists and journalists. In each case, the defendants were accused of espionage for working on sensitive military and environmental matters with foreign organizations or countries, even though they appeared to be using material that was in the public domain.
Human Rights Watch called the series of cases here "spy mania."
"While these prosecutions are unlikely to lead to the formal reintroduction of Soviet-style blanket limitations on freedom of speech on sensitive issues, 'spy mania' has certainly served as a warning to other journalists, scientists and activists working on sensitive issues," the human rights group said in a report.
Danilov said he planned to appeal the conviction in Russian courts and then the European Court of Human Rights.
----
Abolish the CIA!
Tom Dispatch
November 6, 2004
by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=3927
No longer will Dick Cheney have to pay visits to Langley, Virginia and lean on CIA analysts to produce the kind of intelligence a Veep might need; not now that the President has his man, Republican loyalist Porter J. Goss, heading up the Agency, and a second term in hand. Of course, the CIA was already highly politicized in the first Bush term. Run by George Tenet (accurately dubbed "a political apparatchik" by Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis), throughout most of the last four years, it proved a servile agency despite possessing perfectly clear-eyed analysts who knew the truth about Iraq and wanted to pass it on.
But not, it seemed, servile enough. Unhappy with the intelligence pickings from the CIA, the Bush administration turned to its loveably, unreliable then-"friend," Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, for the sort of intelligence that could actually be used to terrify a nation into war - you know, all those weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands, all those ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda - and then Douglas Feith, the number three man in the Pentagon, created the Office of Special Plans to "search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists." It cherry-picked intelligence from Chalabi and others and passed it up the line to those eager to speak of mushroom clouds going off over American cities.
Such a complicated process, though. Now, former Republican congressman as well as ex-CIA agent and spy-recruiter Goss will bring no less loyal political aides from the House and elsewhere into the Agency's leadership and so simplify matters in a second Bush term. Already, before November 2, Goss' CIA was working hard to suppress crucial 9/11 information, as Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer reported. The CIA will now be but another, ever expanding militarized arm of an administration that will already control Congress (hence no possibility of serious oversight over the Agency), significant parts of our courts and justice system, a media machine, a political machine, a religious machine, a majority of the state governments in our federalist system, and sizable hunks of the government bureaucracy. The President, in other words, will have his own intelligence arm and secret army at his beck and interventionist call for the next four years, and no one around to take a peek. The ultimate check on the administration was the electorate and it just failed. (Oh, let's not forget that there will at least be angry CIA agents and others still stuck in this highly politicized system, feeling betrayed, and as things begin to go truly off the tracks, leaking like mad.)
Of course, this administration has long been intent on putting much of what it does not only beyond all oversight, but utterly out of sight. After September 11, they put extraordinary effort and legal thought into creating an offshore mini-gulag, beyond the courts, beyond prying eyes, a torture-system beholden only to the President of the United States in his role as commander-in-chief. The CIA was put in charge of the most secret aspects of this system and, as the part of the government best tooled in the arts of offshore interrogation, from Abu Ghraib to a "ghost prison" in Jordan, they have overseen the worst parts of this black hole of injustice.
From the penumbra of the secret world of the Bush administration and the CIA will come future acts sure to outrage Americans. This then is a moment to return to history and remind ourselves of exactly what mayhem and misfortune the CIA has actually caused - us as well as the rest of the world. That makes the Chalmers Johnson essay below on the CIA and Afghan blowback a must read. Johnson is the author of the prophetic book Blowback, written before 9/11, and more recently The Sorrows of Empire, which explores our military reach in the world. This piece has been slightly adapted from a review that originally appeared in the London Review of Books, a lively English literary/political publication, and that is reprinted with the Review's kind permission. Tom
Abolish the CIA!
by Chalmers Johnson
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to 10 September 2001, by Steve Coll, New York: Penguin, 2004, 695 pp, $29.95.
Steve Coll ends his important book on Afghanistan by quoting Afghan President Hamid Karzai: "What an unlucky country." Americans might find this a convenient way to ignore what their government did in Afghanistan between 1979 and the present, but luck had nothing to do with it. Brutal, incompetent, secret operations of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, frequently manipulated by the military intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, caused the catastrophic devastation of this poor country. On the evidence contained in Coll's book Ghost Wars, neither the Americans nor their victims in numerous Muslim and Third World countries will ever know peace until the Central Intelligence Agency has been abolished.
It should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States. In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahedin guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. In an interview two years later with Le Nouvel Observateur, President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly confirmed Gates' assertion. "According to the official version of history," Brzezinski said, "CIA aid to the mujahedin began during 1980, that's to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention."
Asked whether he in any way regretted these actions, Brzezinski replied: "Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'"
Nouvel Observateur: "And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"
Brzezinski: "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
Even though the demise of the Soviet Union owes more to Mikhail Gorbachev than to Afghanistan's partisans, Brzezinski certainly helped produce "agitated Muslims," and the consequences have been obvious ever since. Carter, Brzezinski and their successors in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, including Gates, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Colin Powell, all bear some responsibility for the 1.8 million Afghan casualties, 2.6 million refugees, and 10 million unexploded land-mines that followed from their decisions. They must also share the blame for the blowback that struck New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. After all, al-Qaeda was an organization they helped create and arm.
A Wind Blows in from Afghanistan
The term "blowback" first appeared in a classified CIA post-action report on the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, carried out in the interests of British Petroleum. In 2000, James Risen of the New York Times explained: "When the Central Intelligence Agency helped overthrow Muhammad Mossadegh as Iran's prime minister in 1953, ensuring another 25 years of rule for Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the CIA was already figuring that its first effort to topple a foreign government would not be its last. The CIA, then just six years old and deeply committed to winning the Cold War, viewed its covert action in Iran as a blueprint for coup plots elsewhere around the world, and so commissioned a secret history to detail for future generations of CIA operatives how it had been done . . . Amid the sometimes curious argot of the spy world - 'safebases' and 'assets' and the like - the CIA warns of the possibilities of 'blowback.' The word . . . has since come into use as shorthand for the unintended consequences of covert operations."
"Blowback" does not refer simply to reactions to historical events but more specifically to reactions to operations carried out by the U.S. government that are kept secret from the American public and from most of their representatives in Congress. This means that when civilians become victims of a retaliatory strike, they are at first unable to put it in context or to understand the sequence of events that led up to it. Even though the American people may not know what has been done in their name, those on the receiving end certainly do: they include the people of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959 to the present), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Laos (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-73), Greece (1967-73), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1979 to the present), El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s), and Iraq (1991 to the present). Not surprisingly, sometimes these victims try to get even.
There is a direct line between the attacks on September 11, 2001 - the most significant instance of blowback in the history of the CIA - and the events of 1979. In that year, revolutionaries threw both the Shah and the Americans out of Iran, and the CIA, with full presidential authority, began its largest ever clandestine operation: the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union, which involved the recruitment and training of militants from all over the Islamic world. Steve Coll's book is a classic study of blowback and is a better, fuller reconstruction of this history than the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the "9/11 Commission Report" published by Norton in July).
From 1989 to 1992, Coll was the Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi. Given the CIA's paranoid and often self-defeating secrecy, what makes his book especially interesting is how he came to know what he claims to know. He has read everything on the Afghan insurgency and the civil wars that followed, and has been given access to the original manuscript of Robert Gates' memoir (Gates was CIA director from 1991 to 1993), but his main source is some two hundred interviews conducted between the autumn of 2001 and the summer of 2003 with numerous CIA officials as well as politicians, military officers, and spies from all the countries involved except Russia. He identifies CIA officials only if their names have already been made public. Many of his most important interviews were on the record and he quotes from them extensively.
Among the notable figures who agreed to be interviewed are Benazir Bhutto, who is candid about having lied to American officials for two years about Pakistan's aid to the Taliban, and Anthony Lake, the US national security adviser from 1993 to 1997, who lets it be known that he thought CIA director James Woolsey was "arrogant, tin-eared and brittle." Woolsey was so disliked by Clinton that when an apparent suicide pilot crashed a single-engine Cessna airplane on the south lawn of the White House in 1994, jokers suggested it might be the CIA director trying to get an appointment with the President.
Among the CIA people who talked to Coll are Gates; Woolsey; Howard Hart, Islamabad station chief in 1981; Clair George, former head of clandestine operations; William Piekney, Islamabad station chief from 1984 to 1986; Cofer Black, Khartoum station chief in the mid-1990s and director of the Counterterrorist Center from 1999-2002; Fred Hitz, a former CIA Inspector General; Thomas Twetten, Deputy Director of Operations, 1991-1993; Milton Bearden, chief of station at Islamabad, 1986 -1989; Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, head of the Counterterrorist Center from 1986 to 1988; Vincent Cannistraro, an officer in the Counterterrorist Center shortly after it was opened in 1986; and an official Coll identifies only as "Mike," the head of the "bin Laden Unit" within the Counterterrorist Center from 1997 to 1999, who was subsequently revealed to be Michael F. Scheuer, the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. (See Eric Lichtblau, CIA Officer Denounces Agency and Sept. 11 Report)
In 1973, General Sardar Mohammed Daoud, the cousin and brother-in-law of King Zahir Shah, overthrew the king, declared Afghanistan a republic, and instituted a program of modernization. Zahir Shah went into exile in Rome. These developments made possible the rise of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a pro-Soviet communist party, which, in early 1978, with extensive help from the USSR, overthrew President Daoud. The communists' policies of secularization in turn provoked a violent response from devout Islamists. The anti-Communist revolt that began at Herat in western Afghanistan in March 1979 originated in a government initiative to teach girls to read. The fundamentalist Afghans opposed to this were supported by a triumvirate of nations - the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia - with quite diverse motives, but the U.S. didn't take these differences seriously until it was too late. By the time the Americans woke up, at the end of the 1990s, the radical Islamist Taliban had established its government in Kabul. Recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, it granted Osama bin Laden freedom of action and offered him protection from American efforts to capture or kill him.
Coll concludes: "The Afghan government that the United States eventually chose to support beginning in the late autumn of 2001 - a federation of Massoud's organization [the Northern warlords], exiled intellectuals and royalist Pashtuns - was available for sponsorship a decade before, but the United States could not see a reason then to challenge the alternative, radical Islamist vision promoted by Pakistani and Saudi intelligence . . . Indifference, lassitude, blindness, paralysis and commercial greed too often shaped American foreign policy in Afghanistan and South Asia during the 1990s."
Funding the Fundamentalists
The motives of the White House and the CIA were shaped by the Cold War: a determination to kill as many Soviet soldiers as possible and the desire to restore some aura of rugged machismo as well as credibility that U.S. leaders feared they had lost when the Shah of Iran was overthrown. The CIA had no intricate strategy for the war it was unleashing in Afghanistan. Howard Hart, the agency's representative in the Pakistani capital, told Coll that he understood his orders as: "You're a young man; here's your bag of money, go raise hell. Don't fuck it up, just go out there and kill Soviets." These orders came from a most peculiar American. William Casey, the CIA's director from January 1981 to January 1987, was a Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits. Statues of the Virgin Mary filled his mansion, called "Maryknoll," on Long Island. He attended mass daily and urged Christianity on anyone who asked his advice. Once settled as CIA director under Reagan, he began to funnel covert action funds through the Catholic Church to anti-Communists in Poland and Central America, sometimes in violation of American law. He believed fervently that by increasing the Catholic Church's reach and power he could contain Communism's advance, or reverse it. From Casey's convictions grew the most important U.S. foreign policies of the 1980s - support for an international anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan and sponsorship of state terrorism in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
Casey knew next to nothing about Islamic fundamentalism or the grievances of Middle Eastern nations against Western imperialism. He saw political Islam and the Catholic Church as natural allies in the counter-strategy of covert action to thwart Soviet imperialism. He believed that the USSR was trying to strike at the U.S. in Central America and in the oil-producing states of the Middle East. He supported Islam as a counter to the Soviet Union's atheism, and Coll suggests that he sometimes conflated lay Catholic organizations such as Opus Dei with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian extremist organization, of which Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, was a passionate member. The Muslim Brotherhood's branch in Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami, was strongly backed by the Pakistani army, and Coll writes that Casey, more than any other American, was responsible for welding the alliance of the CIA, Saudi intelligence, and the army of General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's military dictator from 1977 to 1988. On the suggestion of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization, Casey went so far as to print thousands of copies of the Koran, which he shipped to the Afghan frontier for distribution in Afghanistan and Soviet Uzbekistan. He also fomented, without presidential authority, Muslim attacks inside the USSR and always held that the CIA's clandestine officers were too timid. He preferred the type represented by his friend Oliver North.
Over time, Casey's position hardened into CIA dogma, which its agents, protected by secrecy from ever having their ignorance exposed, enforced in every way they could. The agency resolutely refused to help choose winners and losers among the Afghan jihad's guerrilla leaders. The result, according to Coll, was that "Zia-ul-Haq's political and religious agenda in Afghanistan gradually became the CIA's own." In the era after Casey, some scholars, journalists, and members of Congress questioned the agency's lavish support of the Pakistan-backed Islamist general Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, especially after he refused to shake hands with Ronald Reagan because he was an infidel. But Milton Bearden, the Islamabad station chief from 1986 to 1989, and Frank Anderson, chief of the Afghan task force at Langley, vehemently defended Hekmatyar on the grounds that "he fielded the most effective anti-Soviet fighters."
Even after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, the CIA continued to follow Pakistani initiatives, such as aiding Hekmatyar's successor, Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. When Edmund McWilliams, the State Department's special envoy to the Afghan resistance in 1988-89, wrote that "American authority and billions of dollars in taxpayer funding had been hijacked at the war's end by a ruthless anti-American cabal of Islamists and Pakistani intelligence officers determined to impose their will on Afghanistan," CIA officials denounced him and planted stories in the embassy that he might be homosexual or an alcoholic. Meanwhile, Afghanistan descended into one of the most horrific civil wars of the 20th century. The CIA never fully corrected its naive and ill-informed reading of Afghan politics until after bin Laden bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998.
Fair-weather Friends
A cooperative agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan was anything but natural or based on mutual interests. Only two weeks after radical students seized the American Embassy in Tehran on November 5, 1979, a similar group of Islamic radicals burned to the ground the American Embassy in Islamabad as Zia's troops stood idly by. But the US was willing to overlook almost anything the Pakistani dictator did in order to keep him committed to the anti-Soviet jihad. After the Soviet invasion, Brzezinski wrote to Carter: "This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy." History will record whether Brzezinski made an intelligent decision in giving a green light to Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons in return for assisting the anti-Soviet insurgency.
Pakistan's motives in Afghanistan were very different from those of the U.S. Zia was a devout Muslim and a passionate supporter of Islamist groups in his own country, in Afghanistan, and throughout the world. But he was not a fanatic and had some quite practical reasons for supporting Islamic radicals in Afghanistan. He probably would not have been included in the U.S. Embassy's annual "beard census" of Pakistani military officers, which recorded the number of officer graduates and serving generals who kept their beards in accordance with Islamic traditions as an unobtrusive measure of increasing or declining religious radicalism - Zia had only a mustache.
From the beginning, Zia demanded that all weapons and aid for the Afghans from whatever source pass through ISI hands. The CIA was delighted to agree. Zia feared above all that Pakistan would be squeezed between a Soviet-dominated Afghanistan and a hostile India. He also had to guard against a Pashtun independence movement that, if successful, would break up Pakistan. In other words, he backed the Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan on religious grounds but was quite prepared to use them strategically. In doing so, he laid the foundations for Pakistan's anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir in the 1990s.
Zia died in a mysterious plane crash on August 17, 1988, four months after the signing of the Geneva Accords on April 14, 1988, which ratified the formal terms of the Soviet withdrawal. As the Soviet troops departed, Hekmatyar embarked on a clandestine plan to eliminate his rivals and establish his Islamic party, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, as the most powerful national force in Afghanistan. The U.S. scarcely paid attention, but continued to support Pakistan. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the implosion of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. lost virtually all interest in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar was never as good as the CIA thought he was, and with the creation in 1994 of the Taliban, both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia transferred their secret support. This new group of jihadis proved to be the most militarily effective of the warring groups. On September 26, 1996, the Taliban conquered Kabul. The next day they killed the formerly Soviet-backed President Najibullah, expelled 8,000 female undergraduate students from Kabul University, and fired a similar number of women schoolteachers. As the mujahedin closed in on his palace, Najibullah told reporters: "If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism." His comments would prove all too accurate.
Pakistan's military intelligence officers hated Benazir Bhutto, Zia's elected successor, but she, like all post-Zia heads of state, including General Pervez Musharraf, supported the Taliban in pursuit of Zia's "dream" - a loyal, Pashtun-led Islamist government in Kabul. Coll explains:
"Every Pakistani general, liberal or religious, believed in the jihadists by 1999, not from personal Islamic conviction, in most cases, but because the jihadists had proved themselves over many years as the one force able to frighten, flummox and bog down the Hindu-dominated Indian army. About a dozen Indian divisions had been tied up in Kashmir during the late 1990s to suppress a few thousand well-trained, paradise-seeking Islamist guerrillas. What more could Pakistan ask? The jihadist guerrillas were a more practical day-to-day strategic defense against Indian hegemony than even a nuclear bomb. To the west, in Afghanistan, the Taliban provided geopolitical 'strategic depth' against India and protection from rebellion by Pakistan's own restive Pashtun population. For Musharraf, as for many other liberal Pakistani generals, jihad was not a calling, it was a professional imperative. It was something he did at the office. At quitting time he packed up his briefcase, straightened the braid on his uniform, and went home to his normal life."
If the CIA understood any of this, it never let on to its superiors in Washington, and Charlie Wilson, a highly paid Pakistani lobbyist and former congressman for East Texas, was anything but forthcoming with Congress about what was really going on. During the 1980s, Wilson had used his power on the House Appropriations Committee to supply all the advanced weapons the CIA might want in Afghanistan. Coll remarks that Wilson "saw the mujahedin through the prism of his own whisky-soaked romanticism, as noble savages fighting for freedom, as almost biblical figures." Hollywood is now making a movie, based on the book Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile, glorifying the congressman who "used his trips to the Afghan frontier in part to impress upon a succession of girlfriends how powerful he was." Tom Hanks has reportedly signed on to play him.
Enter bin Laden and the Saudis
Saudi Arabian motives were different from those of both the U.S. and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is, after all, the only modern nation-state created by jihad. The Saudi royal family, which came to power at the head of a movement of Wahhabi religious fundamentalists, espoused Islamic radicalism in order to keep it under their control, at least domestically. "Middle-class, pious Saudis flush with oil wealth," Coll writes, "embraced the Afghan cause as American churchgoers might respond to an African famine or a Turkish earthquake": "The money flowing from the kingdom arrived at the Afghan frontier in all shapes and sizes: gold jewelry dropped on offering plates by merchants' wives in Jedda mosques; bags of cash delivered by businessmen to Riyadh charities as zakat, an annual Islamic tithe; fat checks written from semi-official government accounts by minor Saudi princes; bountiful proceeds raised in annual telethons led by Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh." Richest of all were the annual transfers from the Saudi General Intelligence Department, or Istakhbarat, to the CIA's Swiss bank accounts.
From the moment agency money and weapons started to flow to the mujahedin in late 1979, Saudi Arabia matched the U.S. payments dollar for dollar. They also bypassed the ISI and supplied funds directly to the groups in Afghanistan they favored, including the one led by their own pious young millionaire, Osama bin Laden. According to Milton Bearden, private Saudi and Arab funding of up to $25 million a month flowed to Afghan Islamist armies. Equally important, Pakistan trained between 16,000 and 18,000 fresh Muslim recruits on the Afghan frontier every year, and another 6,500 or so were instructed by Afghans inside the country beyond ISI control. Most of these eventually joined bin Laden's private army of 35,000 "Arab Afghans."
Much to the confusion of the Americans, moderate Saudi leaders, such as Prince Turki, the intelligence chief, supported the Saudi backing of fundamentalists so long as they were in Afghanistan and not in Saudi Arabia. A graduate of a New Jersey prep school and a member of Bill Clinton's class of 1964 at Georgetown University, Turki belongs to the pro-Western, modernizing wing of the Saudi royal family. (He is the current Saudi ambassador to Great Britain and Ireland.) But that did not make him pro-American. Turki saw Saudi Arabia in continual competition with its powerful Shia neighbor, Iran. He needed credible Sunni, pro-Saudi Islamist clients to compete with Iran's clients, especially in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have sizable Shia populations.
Prince Turki was also irritated by the U.S. loss of interest in Afghanistan after its Cold War skirmish with the Soviet Union. He understood that the U.S. would ignore Saudi aid to Islamists so long as his country kept oil prices under control and cooperated with the Pentagon on the building of military bases. Like many Saudi leaders, Turki probably underestimated the longer term threat of Islamic militancy to the Saudi royal house, but, as Coll observes, "Prince Turki and other liberal princes found it easier to appease their domestic Islamist rivals by allowing them to proselytize and make mischief abroad than to confront and resolve these tensions at home." In Riyadh, the CIA made almost no effort to recruit paid agents or collect intelligence. The result was that Saudi Arabia worked continuously to enlarge the ISI's proxy jihad forces in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, and the Saudi Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the kingdom's religious police, tutored and supported the Taliban's own Islamic police force.
By the late 1990s, after the embassy bombings in East Africa, the CIA and the White House awoke to the Islamist threat, but they defined it almost exclusively in terms of Osama bin Laden's leadership of al-Qaeda and failed to see the larger context. They did not target the Taliban, Pakistani military intelligence, or the funds flowing to the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Instead, they devoted themselves to trying to capture or kill bin Laden. Coll's chapters on the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader are entitled, "You Are to Capture Him Alive," "We Are at War," and "Is There Any Policy?" but he might more accurately have called them "Keystone Kops" or "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight."
On February 23 1998, bin Laden summoned newspaper and TV reporters to the camp at Khost that the CIA had built for him at the height of the anti-Soviet jihad. He announced the creation of a new organization - the International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders - and issued a manifesto saying that "to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilian or military, is an obligation for every Muslim who is able to do so in any country." On August 7, he and his associates put this manifesto into effect with devastating truck bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The CIA had already identified bin Laden's family compound in the open desert near Kandahar Airport, a collection of buildings called Tarnak Farm. It's possible that more satellite footage has been taken of this site than of any other place on earth; one famous picture seems to show bin Laden standing outside one of his wives' homes. The agency conceived an elaborate plot to kidnap bin Laden from Tarnak Farm with the help of Afghan operatives and spirit him out of the country but CIA director George Tenet canceled the project because of the high risk of civilian casualties; he was resented within the agency for his timidity. Meanwhile, the White House stationed submarines in the northern Arabian Sea with the map coordinates of Tarnak Farm pre-loaded into their missile guidance systems. They were waiting for hard evidence from the CIA that bin Laden was in residence.
Within days of the East Africa bombings, Clinton signed a top secret Memorandum of Notification authorizing the CIA to use lethal force against bin Laden. On 20 August 1998, he ordered 75 cruise missiles, costing $750,000 each, to be fired at the Zawhar Kili camp (about seven miles south of Khost), the site of a major al-Qaeda meeting. The attack killed 21 Pakistanis but bin Laden was forewarned, perhaps by Saudi intelligence. Two of the missiles fell short into Pakistan, causing Islamabad to denounce the U.S. action. At the same time, the U.S. fired 13 cruise missiles into a chemical plant in Khartoum: the CIA claimed that the plant was partly owned by bin Laden and that it was manufacturing nerve gas. They knew none of this was true.
Clinton had publicly confessed to his sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky on August 17, and many critics around the world conjectured that both attacks were diversionary measures. (The film Wag the Dog had just come out, in which a president in the middle of an election campaign is charged with molesting a Girl Scout and makes it seem as if he's gone to war against Albania to distract people's attention.) As a result Clinton became more cautious, and he and his aides began seriously to question the quality of CIA information. The U.S. bombing in May 1999 of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, allegedly because of faulty intelligence, further discredited the agency. A year later, Tenet fired one intelligence officer and reprimanded six managers, including a senior official, for their bungling of that incident.
The Clinton administration made two more attempts to get bin Laden. During the winter of 1998-99, the CIA confirmed that a large party of Persian Gulf dignitaries had flown into the Afghan desert for a falcon-hunting party, and that bin Laden had joined them. The CIA called for an attack on their encampment until Richard Clarke, Clinton's counter-terrorism aide, discovered that among the hosts of the gathering was royalty from the United Arab Emirates. Clarke had been instrumental in a 1998 deal to sell 80 F-16 military jets to the UAE, which was also a crucial supplier of oil and gas to America and its allies. The strike was called off.
The CIA as a Secret Presidential Army
Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton administration devoted major resources to the development of a long-distance drone aircraft called Predator, invented by the former chief designer for the Israeli air force, who had emigrated to the United States. In its nose was mounted a Sony digital TV camera, similar to the ones used by news helicopters reporting on freeway traffic or on O.J. Simpson's fevered ride through Los Angeles. By the turn of the century, Agency experts had also added a Hellfire anti-tank missile to the Predator and tested it on a mock-up of Tarnak Farm in the Nevada desert. This new weapons system made it possible instantly to kill bin Laden if the camera spotted him. Unfortunately for the CIA, on one of its flights from Uzbekistan over Tarnak Farm the Predator photographed as a target a child's wooden swing. To his credit, Clinton held back on using the Hellfire because of the virtual certainty of killing bystanders, and Tenet, scared of being blamed for another failure, suggested that responsibility for the armed Predator's use be transferred to the Air Force.
When the new Republican administration came into office, it was deeply uninterested in bin Laden and terrorism even though the outgoing national security adviser, Sandy Berger, warned Condoleezza Rice that it would be George W. Bush's most serious foreign policy problem. On August 6, 2001, the CIA delivered its daily briefing to Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with the headline "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.," but the president seemed not to notice. Slightly more than a month later, Osama bin Laden successfully brought off perhaps the most significant example of asymmetric warfare in the history of international relations.
Coll has written a powerful indictment of the CIA's myopia and incompetence, but he seems to be of two minds. He occasionally indulges in flights of pro-CIA rhetoric, describing it, for example, as a "vast, pulsing, self-perpetuating, highly sensitive network on continuous alert" whose "listening posts were attuned to even the most isolated and dubious evidence of pending attacks" and whose "analysts were continually encouraged to share information as widely as possible among those with appropriate security clearances." This is nonsense: the early-warning functions of the CIA were upstaged decades ago by covert operations.
Coll acknowledges that every president since Truman, once he discovered that he had a totally secret, financially unaccountable private army at his personal disposal, found its deployment irresistible. But covert operations usually became entangled in hopeless webs of secrecy, and invariably led to more blowback. Richard Clarke argues that "the CIA used its classification rules not only to protect its agents but also to deflect outside scrutiny of its covert operations," and Peter Tomsen, the former US ambassador to the Afghan resistance during the late 1980s, concludes that "America's failed policies in Afghanistan flowed in part from the compartmented, top secret isolation in which the CIA always sought to work." Excessive, bureaucratic secrecy lies at the heart of the Agency's failures.
Given the Agency's clear role in causing the disaster of September 11, 2001, what we need today is not a new intelligence czar but an end to the secrecy behind which the CIA hides and avoids accountability for its actions. To this day, in the wake of 9/11 and the false warnings about a threat from Iraq, the CIA continues grossly to distort any and all attempts at a Constitutional foreign policy. Although Coll doesn't go on to draw the conclusion, I believe the CIA has outlived any Cold War justification it once might have had and should simply be abolished.
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Annan protests Fallujah strategy
November 06, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041105-102419-3081r.htm
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who recently angered the United States by calling the war in Iraq "illegal," has weighed in again with a letter to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warning against attacking Fallujah.
"The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation," Mr. Annan wrote in the letter.
All three of the letter's recipients said it was not for Mr. Annan - but for the Iraqi government - to decide whether and when an offensive was necessary against the terrorist stronghold west of Baghdad.
Mr. Annan discussed his concerns with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Sunday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"In this regard, frankly, we differ," Mr. Boucher said.
"The situation in Fallujah remains difficult and unstable," he said. "Restoration of peace in Fallujah and other towns is very important to [the Iraqis] and to us, and it needs to be done soon for the sake of the people who live there, who deserve a chance to participate in the political process."
Mr. Allawi, who was in Brussels yesterday for a meeting with leaders of the European Union, was more blunt.
"It was a confused letter, really, and message that I got from him. It's not clear to me, and we are now seeking clarification," Mr. Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp.
"I don't know what he means by 'not to attack' or 'to attack.' What are the substitutes? I don't know what pressure he has to bear on the insurgents," Mr. Allawi said of Mr. Annan. "If he can stop the insurgents from inflicting damage and killing Iraqis, then he is welcome."
In London, the Foreign Office also was dismissive of Mr. Annan's warning.
"He's allowed to say what he wants. But nevertheless we listen to the Iraqi government in this respect. Fallujah is a matter for the government of Iraq," one official said.
"It is easy for people not in Iraq to underestimate the overwhelming concern that the Iraqis themselves have for their security," he said. "So you cannot have an area as big as Fallujah which is allowed to be a base for terrorism."
Mr. Annan's letter to the three leaders, first reported in the Los Angeles Times, came as the U.S. military continued daily air strikes against militant targets in Fallujah in anticipation of an offensive against the rebel-held town.
Although the United Nations has been called on to play a major role in the elections slated for late January, Mr. Annan has been reluctant to send to Iraq more than a limited number of U.N. staffers because of the dangerous security situation there.
"I and all my colleagues at the United Nations Secretariat want to help," he said. "But we need a conducive environment if elections are to produce a positive effect."
Fallujah is believed to be an operating base for Islamist terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and his followers, who have claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings.
Mr. Annan has been a critic of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq from the beginning.
In September, he went so far as to call it "illegal" - a claim Mr. Powell speedily rejected in an interview with The Washington Times.
U.N. officials yesterday confirmed that Mr. Annan sent the letter on Sunday, but they appeared frustrated that it had been leaked.
"The secretary-general has a pretty wide-ranging correspondence with world leaders and he regards such correspondence as privileged," U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast said in New York.
Not all of Iraq's leaders agree with the prime minister.
"Using force that kills civilians on a large scale is a mistake. The logic of occupation must end," Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid al-Bayati said on Thursday.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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2 GIs defend their killing of wounded Iraqi
Reuters
November 6, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/05/news/killing.html
LOS ANGELES Two U.S. soldiers could face murder charges in a military trial in Baghdad for shooting and killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager who had been mistaken for an insurgent by American troops, The Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.
The newspaper said on Thursday that the two army staff sergeants had admitted that they had shot the Iraqi boy as he lay moaning on the ground but that they had said they did so out of mercy.
A total of seven Iraqis were killed in the incident in August in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, in which U.S. troops fired on a garbage truck on Aug. 18 after mistakenly concluding that it was planting roadside bombs, the newspaper said, quoting Iraqi witnesses and U.S. military officials.
The two soldiers told U.S. officials that they had killed the teenager to "put him out of his misery," the paper said.
But Iraqi witnesses, including a relative of the boy who had pleaded for U.S. troops to help him, were said to be enraged by the killing.
The teenager was shot as U.S. medics rushed to treat a half dozen or so of those wounded on Aug. 18 when the garbage truck was fired upon and bust into flames.
Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban, 29, of Carson, California, and Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, both of 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, face military court proceedings in Baghdad to determine if there is enough evidence for court martial, the newspaper reported.
If convicted, they could receive the death penalty.
The army said it was unable to identify the boy who was killed. But citing Iraqi witnesses, The Los Angeles Times identified him as Qassim Hassan, 16, who had been working the night shift on the garbage truck with his brother and several cousins.
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National Guard Agrees to Halt Exercises After Strafing School
November 6, 2004
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/nyregion/06strafe.html
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey demanded an explanation yesterday of a warplane's errant strafing of an Ocean County elementary school with cannon fire, and asked that the Air National Guard in Washington immediately suspend training operations in the state pending a full investigation.
Military officials quickly complied, but said there was still no explanation for the cannonading of the school in Little Egg Harbor Township on Wednesday night, which caused no injuries or major damage. The school's officials said that 970 children would return to classrooms on Monday, with bullet holes patched up and with official assurances that no warplanes would be streaking overhead.
But there was a deepening concern among parents and other residents of the sparsely populated township, 20 miles north of Atlantic City, who have lived for decades within earshot of Warren Grove Gunnery Range. The residents' concerns echoed those of Mr. Lautenberg.
In a letter to Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., commander of the District of Columbia National Guard, Senator Lautenberg voiced alarm over the strafing, which occurred at 10:15 p.m. when an F-16 on a training flight out of Andrews Air Force Base fired 25 to 27 cannon shells that missed the target range by three miles and crashed down onto and around the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School.
"The actions of the pilot - whether accidental or not - are totally incomprehensible, and I therefore ask that the District of Columbia Air National Guard suspend all training operations in the state of New Jersey until this matter has been fully investigated," the senator wrote. "I ask that your prompt review produce a complete explanation of the circumstances, including a remedy that will absolutely guarantee that nothing like this can ever happen again."
Senator Lautenberg also requested a meeting with General Wherley and two subordinates in his command chain, Brig. Gen. Duane J. Lodrige, commander of the District of Columbia Air National Guard, and Col. Linda K. McTague, commander of the 113th Wing, to which the F-16 and its pilot are assigned.
Sgt. Lorenzo Parnell, a spokesman for General Wherley, said that training flights over the Warren Grove Gunnery Range had been suspended after the cannonading was reported, and that all training flights in the state would be suspended until after the inquiry, as the senator requested. Maj. Sheldon Smith, a spokesman for the 113th Wing, said that the aircraft and cannon were being inspected by investigators. "At this point, nothing has been ruled out. We don't know if it's a mechanical malfunction or human error."
Michael Dupuis, president of the township school board, said that he would ask military officials at the board's next meeting on Nov. 15 to restrict training permanently at the gunnery range to nighttime hours, and never to allow strafing or bombing while school is in session.
Since World War II, the gunnery has been used for training pilots and crews of bombers and fighters of the Air National Guard in New Jersey and other Marine, Navy and Air Force units. In recent years, stray bombs have set brush fires, and a jet fighter crashed near the Garden State Parkway in 2002, although the pilot parachuted to safety.
A half-dozen residents yesterday voiced shock over the cannonading.
Wayne Schwartz, who owns Great Bay, a fishing supply store on Route 539, halfway between the school and the gunnery, said: "We were in shock when we heard about it. It's a good thing it wasn't in the day," when the school would have been full of children in the third to sixth grades.
Military officials said the F-16 pilot, whose identity was withheld, was turning into a strafing dive at 7,000 feet when the jet's left-side fuselage cannon fired a burst of nonexplosive lead shells. It was to have been fired at 5,000 feet, officials said later. The pilot flew back to his base in Maryland, apparently unaware that some slugs had hit the school.
Four custodians were in the one-story brick building as eight shells hit, driving holes in the roof and causing damage in a few classrooms, a hallway and an office. Five slugs were found in the parking lot, and 12 to 14 more were not accounted for, officials said.
Robert Hanley and Jason George contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Veteran Wins His Discharge After Taking Army to Court
November 6, 2004
By PATRICK HEALY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/nyregion/06soldier.html
When Jay Ferriola, a United States Army captain, decided to fight an order sending him to Iraq, he was not tilting against the war, the Bush administration or any political ideology. His refusal was simple, he said. He had fulfilled his eight-year military commitment and was ready to leave the Army behind.
Mr. Ferriola got his wish yesterday. Two weeks after he filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan, arguing that he had resigned properly from the military, the Army granted him an honorable discharge, lawyers for the United States attorney's office said.
With the Iraq war and the presidential election as a backdrop, Mr. Ferriola's lawsuit challenging his deployment drew much attention.
But his fight ended quietly. After a brief and cordial hearing in court yesterday, Mr. Ferriola and his parents walked outside, spoke with reporters and drove away. In his first interview, Mr. Ferriola, 31, who lives in Manhattan and is a sales manager, said he held no grudge toward the Army and said he suspected a bureaucratic mix-up was to blame. After resigning from the Army in June, he received a notice on Oct. 19 saying that he was to be deployed to Iraq.
"I wanted to move on," Mr. Ferriola said yesterday afternoon, sitting in the office of his lawyer, Barry Slotnick. "How I feel about the war really did not come into it. Whether we were at peace or at war, it really didn't matter. I wanted to be done with the Army."
When Mr. Ferriola called the Army's inspector general to complain about the notice, he was told that he had two options, he said. He could report to Fort Dix on Oct. 28, as ordered, or face a dishonorable discharge and arrest for going AWOL.
Instead, he sued.
"These notices have been going out wholesale," said Mr. Slotnick. "A lot of people are getting these two to three days before reporting. They pack up and they report. We estimate that there are many, many, many soldiers in Iraq who are not members of the U.S. Army, because of a bureaucratic snafu."
As the Army calls up Reserve and National Guard units to serve in Iraq, using stop-loss orders to keep soldiers from resigning, suits like Mr. Ferriola's are growing more common, said Marti Hiken, a co-chairwoman of the Military Law Task Force, which is part of the National Lawyers Guild, a liberal group.
Mr. Ferriola included his resignation letter, signed and dated June 7, with the lawsuit. He said his commanding officer had granted him a discharge from his unit, the 455th Military Police Detachment, based in Uniondale, N.Y.
Mr. Ferriola said he never planned to be a career soldier.
He grew up in Breezy Point, Queens, and the chance to serve his country, travel and earn money for college drew him to the military. He enrolled in the Virginia Military Institute and graduated in 1995.
"I thought what I really wanted to do was be a pilot," Mr. Ferriola said. "I saw 'Top Gun.' I wanted to fly."
But the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps was offering scholarships, so Mr. Ferriola signed up to serve four years of active duty and four years in the Reserves. A combat engineer, he served in South Korea, Bosnia and Germany.
He returned to New York City and to his Reserve status. When his unit was called to go to Iraq in February 2003, Mr. Ferriola said, he packed his bags and went to Fort Dix to train. But the unit was never sent to Iraq, and Mr. Ferriola said he returned to New York. His contract with the Army expired in February, he said.
"I dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's," he said. "I knew I did all that right."
There was one more bureaucratic bungle, when Mr. Ferriola recently opened his mailbox and found a check for $630 from the Army. Mr. Ferriola said he sent it right back.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- human rights
Chile's Army Accepts Blame for Rights Abuses in the Pinochet Era
November 6, 2004
By LARRY ROHTER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/international/americas/06chile.html?pagewanted=all
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 5 - After years of characterizing the human rights violations that occurred in Chile under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet as "excesses" by individual officers rather than a deliberate government policy, the Chilean Army reversed course on Friday and acknowledged that it must bear collective "institutional" blame for such abuses.
"The Army of Chile has taken the difficult but irreversible decision to assume the responsibility for all punishable and morally unacceptable acts in the past that fall on it as an institution," the current army commander, Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre Espinosa, wrote in an essay published by La Tercera, a daily newspaper in Santiago, the capital. "Never and for no one can there be any ethical justification for human rights violations," he said.
An official commission is readying a comprehensive report, expected to be made public this month, on torture and other systematic human rights abuses by state security and intelligence agents during the Pinochet dictatorship. Human rights groups estimate that about 4,000 people were killed after General Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973, in the American-supported coup that overthrew Chile's elected left-wing civilian president, Salvador Allende. Thousands were tortured, jailed, forced to leave the country, stripped of their jobs or sent into internal exile.
The "new vision" that General Cheyre announced Friday clashes directly with the views General Pinochet has always expressed. Now 88, ailing and under almost permanent investigation in connection with human rights abuses that occurred during his 17 years in power, General Pinochet maintains that he and other members of the military high command never issued orders to eliminate opponents of their dictatorship and that any abuses were the work of a few rogue officers.
He and his lawyers had no immediate response to General Cheyre's statement, which could encourage the filing of new legal charges against him. Though General Pinochet has been stripped of his immunity from prosecution in two major investigations, he has avoided a trial so far because doctors found him to be suffering from senile dementia.
"It's going to be hard for Pinochet to keep arguing that he had no clue, no sense, of what was going on, and that all the atrocities were due to a few bad apples," said José Miguel Vivanco, a Chilean who is director of Human Rights Watch Americas. Two former navy commanders close to General Pinochet criticized General Cheyre's declaration.
"It seems to make no sense to me," Adm. Jorge Arancibia said. The other former navy chief, Adm. Jorge Martínez Busch, said he was "not in agreement with this vision, because simply put, that's not how it was." He added: "I categorically reject there was any such policy of state, as some maintain. Responsibility is always individual."
Human rights groups generally expressed skepticism of General Cheyre's timing and motives. They said that while any admission of guilt was welcome and overdue, they would only be satisfied if the army provided names of all in its chain of command who had participated in rights abuses, so that prosecutors could act on the information.
"We worry that this might be just another trick to assure impunity for human rights violators," Lorena Pizarro, president of the Group of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared, said in a telephone interview. "Some defense lawyers are already arguing that since the violations were committed by the state, you cannot hold individuals responsible for that policy."
-------- terrorism
Beheadings on the Rise Around the World
November 6, 2004
By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/COPYCAT_BEHEADINGS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- It was called "Operation Baghdad" and, to be sure, the headless bodies of the three police officers recalled the violence in that city. But these attacks happened in Haiti, not in Iraq.
The brutal beheadings in Iraq appear to have inspired militants in other parts of the world who are drawn to the shock value of the horrifying attacks and the intense publicity they attract.
Thailand and the Netherlands are two other countries where suspected extremists recently beheaded or slit the throats of their victims in what appear to be copycat attacks.
Rime Allaf, associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said beheadings are spreading because the practice "has so horrified us in the West."
"It achieves results and it makes the headlines," Allaf added. "People are talking about groups that we've never heard about before."
The horrifying tactic has spread as far as the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, where loyalists of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide seized on the Iraqi beheadings as a symbol of strength and intimidation.
The headless bodies of three police officers were found in Port-au-Prince early last month, and authorities said the militants had launched a terror campaign called "Operation Baghdad."
Nobody claimed responsibility for the decapitations, but Aristide supporters echoed that thought.
"We'll be in the streets until death or Aristide comes back," protester Milo Fenelon said a few days later. "We won't stop. If they come in here, we're going to cut off their heads. It's going to be just like Baghdad."
In Thailand this week, a Buddhist village leader was beheaded after being shot in the chest. A note was left on his body saying his slaying was to avenge the killing of Muslim rioters by government forces.
And in Amsterdam, a suspected Islamic extremist shot and killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, then slit his throat. A note was left impaled by a knife on his body quoting from the Quran and threatening more killings.
"It's an ideal terrorist tool," said Jonathan Stevenson, senior fellow for counterterrorism at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. "It is a horrifying image and I would say it is disproportionately frightening."
The first beheading by Islamic militants in Iraq was the slaying in May of American civilian Nicholas Berg. The killers posted a video on the Internet showing them pushing a bound Berg to his side, putting a large knife to his neck and cutting off his head as a scream sounded and the killers shouted "Allahu akbar!" - "God is great!"
A month later, an al-Qaida-linked Saudi group beheaded an American engineer in Saudi Arabia. The group did not mention Iraq but the executioners called themselves the "Fallujah Brigade" after the city in Iraq that U.S. forces had been besieging.
Since then, at least 12 foreigners, including three other Americans, have been beheaded in Iraq as part of a wave of kidnappings. Videos and the Internet were used to distribute the horrifying images across the world, compounding the shock value.
"I think the initial reason for the beheadings was true shock and awe," Allaf said. "These people are extremely media savvy."
The first beheading of a foreigner touted by Islamic militants was that of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, slain in Pakistan in 2002.
Decapitations had previously occurred in Algeria, Kashmir, Chechnya and the Muslim-dominated southern Philippines but had rarely been used in past militant attacks in the Middle East.
The high-profile killings have inspired some revulsion from Muslims and in recent days there has been a heated debate on Web sites as to whether Islam endorses beheadings.
Mainstream scholars and intellectuals also have spoken out against beheadings, with some saying that the bloody practice is tarnishing the name of Muslims across the world.
"Beheadings and (the) mutilation of bodies stand against Islam," said Egypt's foremost religious leader, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi.
The shock value also has been decreasing with so many beheadings in Iraq, experts say, and newspapers and television stations are devoting less time and space to the killings.
"The benefit of these spectacular kidnappings and beheadings is going down and down," said Michael Radu, a terrorism analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
"Sooner rather than later terrorists will have a problem in that killing innocents is not bringing them what they want and what they want is spectacular media coverage," he said. "Terrorism is part theater. When the theater part of it is cut off, then it doesn't make sense to kill or kidnap people."
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
Group seeks Schwarzenegger's records
November 06, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041105-114306-4402r.htm
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Days after California voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to make government records more available to the public, a media-backed group is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to release all his appointment calendars, schedules and meeting logs since taking office last November.
The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), a group of journalists and civic activists formed in 1988, mailed the request to Mr. Schwarzenegger on Wednesday, the day Proposition 59 became part of the state constitution.
The measure requires judges to interpret state law broadly to allow the public access to state and local government documents and meetings. With no organized opposition, it passed with 83 percent support on Tuesday.
An aide to the governor said the Schwarzenegger administration had not seen the letter yesterday and had no immediate comment. The request requires a response from the governor within 10 days. A denial of the request by the governor could lead to lawsuits.
-------- us politics
Bush Adviser On Iraq Policy To Step Down
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29206-2004Nov5.html
Robert D. Blackwill, the tough-minded diplomat brought to the White House last year to take charge of the administration's troubled Iraq policy, unexpectedly announced his resignation yesterday. His departure deprives the administration of a key figure involved in the effort to ensure that Iraq holds elections by the end of January.
Blackwill had been mentioned prominently in speculation about President Bush's second-term foreign policy team, with some observers pegging him as a possible successor to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. But in an e-mail yesterday afternoon to colleagues on the National Security Council staff, Blackwill said he had told Rice several weeks ago he would continue working through the U.S. presidential election but leave soon afterward, thus taking himself out of the post-election jockeying for power.
Blackwill arrived at the White House in the summer of 2003, when the administration was riven by disputes between the Pentagon and State Department and it was becoming clear that the effort in Iraq was going off-track. He has been widely credited with bringing order to a dysfunctional process, and with helping to reshape administration policy by focusing on ending the U.S.-led occupation and establishing an interim Iraqi government.
He has shuttled between Washington and Baghdad, spending a total of three months in Iraq this year. Because he was the White House point person on Iraq, other administration officials said, they had expected he would have been heavily involved in the preparations for the Iraqi elections.
Blackwill wrote his colleagues yesterday that next week he would go on vacation for several weeks and then return to Washington to pursue opportunities outside government. He had been a Harvard University professor before joining the Bush administration, and he delayed his return to Harvard to take the White House post.
White House officials said Blackwill's departure less than three months before the crucial elections should not be interpreted as a sign of disarray or disagreement in its Iraq policy. Blackwill has told associates that he spent six years working for Bush -- two years as a foreign policy adviser to his first presidential campaign, two years as ambassador to India and two years at the White House -- and that the presidential election seemed like a natural end to this cycle in his life.
In another high-profile departure, J. Cofer Black, a 28-year CIA veteran who headed the agency's hunt for Osama bin Laden after Sept. 11, 2001, and moved over in 2002 to run the State Department's counterterrorism effort, announced he is retiring next week.
Black's claims to fame were in his role in capturing the infamous assassin known as Carlos the Jackal and, more recently, in presenting dramatic testimony before Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, where he announced that "the gloves are off."
As the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, however, Black oversaw the release of a faulty report that underestimated the number of people who died or were injured from international terrorism last year. In a major embarrassment for the administration, the report had to be withdrawn, and the rewritten version more than doubled the count of those killed or injured by international terrorism.
Blackwill, whose official title was coordinator for strategic planning, was a mentor to Rice during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, when they worked together during the Soviet Union's tumultuous unraveling.
During his two-year stint as ambassador to India, Blackwill oversaw one of the fastest transformations in relations between the United States and any country by peaceful means, he noted in a farewell address to the Conference of Indian Industry in New Delhi. When he arrived in 2001, India was under U.S. economic sanctions because of its 1998 nuclear tests and was considered "a nuclear renegade whose policies threatened the entire nonproliferation regime," he said.
But Blackwill's demanding, sometimes prickly personality rubbed colleagues at the State Department the wrong way. The department's inspector general charged that Blackwill was not civil to his subordinates and caused morale to plummet at the embassy.
During his stint at the White House, Blackwill worked closely with L. Paul Bremer, the chief administrator of the occupation authority in Iraq. The two men had forged a close relationship 30 years ago, when Bremer was chief aide to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Blackwill was chief aide to State Department counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt -- and the two mediated policy differences between their bosses, both strong-willed Central European intellectuals.
--------
Bush Will Not Seek Mass Resignations
President Is Said to Be Pleased With Administration and Eager to Move Forward
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29302-2004Nov5.html
President Bush will not ask his appointees for the mass resignation letters that sometimes have been requested with a change of term but instead wants the aides to keep doing their jobs unless they are told otherwise, White House officials said yesterday.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and the director of presidential personnel, Dina Powell, held a conference call on Thursday with agency heads and their White House liaisons and assured them that although all appointees serve at the pleasure of the president, there will be no universal request for resignations.
The decision reflects both Bush's view that his government is working well, and his determination to move aggressively to pass ambitious legislation before he starts being viewed as a lame duck, officials said.
A White House official said the reprieve also indicative of the premium Bush puts on consistency as part of his management style.
Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, said the phone call -- which lasted 30 to 45 minutes, including a question-and-answer period -- was designed to "allay some concerns or anxieties that are natural during this time frame."
"It's not going to be the Nixon model," Bartlett said, "where everybody submits a resignation and then waits to see if they're rehired. There's a presumption that a lot of people did their job well, because we would not be in the position of reelection if they hadn't."
As Bush left Thursday for a three-day weekend at Camp David, White House officials were already working on policy proposals for the State of the Union address in January. The staff is also catching up on governmental work that was postponed during the campaign, including some budget reviews.
"The president said he's going to hit the ground running on Monday, so we better be ready," Bartlett said.
Bush's upcoming public schedule is light, with no public events Monday or Tuesday. He will receive several special briefings on foreign and domestic policy. On Wednesday, he will hold an Iftar dinner, a breaking of the fast during the holy month of Ramadan, for ambassadors and Muslim leaders. On Thursday, he will mark Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery.
Although Bush plans no administration-wide housecleaning, not everyone who wants to stay will be able to. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was subtly given the idea that he would not be staying for all four years but could take all the time he wanted to leave, administration officials said. Snow may help kick off Bush's proposal to overhaul the tax code and then return home to Richmond, officials said.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is also expected to leave. So are Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Such high-profile changes could mean turnover that goes well down into a particular department's chain of command, but Card is insisting that Cabinet members stagger their departures.
-------- voting
VOTING MACHINES
Glitch Found in Ohio Counting
November 6, 2004
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/campaign/06ohio.html?pagewanted=all
An electronic voting machine in hotly contested Ohio added 3,893 votes to President Bush's tally in a suburban Columbus precinct, even though there are just 800 voters there.
The error was discovered in preliminary vote counts from Tuesday night, and local officials say it would have been caught in any case and corrected in the final count now under way. But the glitch fed the rumors that have been flying across the Internet since Election Day that results were tipped by high-tech voting machines.
Preliminary counts show Mr. Bush won Ohio by about 137,000 votes out of roughly 5.5 million cast. Senator John Kerry conceded after determining that recounts and provisional ballots would not give him enough votes to change that result.
Experts in computer security have found flaws in the software and physical design of new touch-screen voting machines from every major maker, and they have sparked a broad campaign demanding that electronic voting systems include a printer to provide voters with a greater sense of security that their votes have been recorded and to allow officials to conduct recounts.
But Ohio uses very few of the new machines. The machines in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, are made by Danaher Controls, Inc., and have been in use since 1992.
Unlike more modern touch-screen machines sold by companies like Diebold Election Systems, the Danaher machines have switches that voters press to make their choices. The decisions are recorded on eight separate memory chips, some of which are on a removable cartridge that is taken to the election center for counting votes.
The mistake on Tuesday occurred when the cartridge reader misread the totals, said Matthew M. Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections. He called it "some kind of hiccup" and said that the equipment performed properly yesterday when the cartridge was re-read. An industry official familiar with the Danaher systems said he had never seen the cartridges provide a false reading before.
The problem, first reported by The Columbus Dispatch, is one of many election night glitches that have surfaced in several states. But all problems so far fall into a class described by Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information Project, as "no big and lots of littles," with no discernible effect on the outcome.
But Aviel D. Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said the relatively smooth election should not be taken as a green light for electronic voting.
"It is like asking a surgeon who states that a particular medical procedure is risky whether he might change his opinion because there was a successful operation using that procedure somewhere in the world," Professor Rubin said.
Lack of a paper trail has helped feed rumors of fraud, said David L. Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University. Without the "safety net" of voter verification, voting technology "has to be near perfect," he said.
"If we get this many reports, we obviously haven't reached this state of near perfection," he said.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Putin Ratifies Kyoto Protocol on Emissions
November 6, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/international/europe/06kyoto.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW, Nov. 5 - President Vladimir V. Putin signed Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the Kremlin announced on Friday, clearing the way for the international treaty aimed at reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases to take effect early next year.
With Mr. Putin's signature, Russia became the 126th country to ratify the treaty, but one of the most important ones after the United States, Australia and others rejected it.
The treaty could take effect only if supported by enough nations to represent at least 55 percent of industrialized countries' emissions of six gases in 1990, and Russia was the only country left that produced enough to clear the threshold.
Mr. Putin's government decided to ratify the treaty in late September after a prolonged and, for the Kremlin, unusually public debate.
Some officials argued that the treaty would do grave economic harm to Russia, limiting industrial growth and undercutting Mr. Putin's often-stated goal of doubling the country's gross domestic product. Others argued that Russia, whose emissions are now well below its 1990 levels, could benefit by selling emission credits to countries that exceed their limits, especially in Europe.
Once the Kremlin settled its internal debate, the necessary legislative approvals proceeded swiftly. The lower house of the Russian Parliament voted overwhelmingly to ratify the protocol on Oct. 22, followed five days later by the upper house. The last step before it takes effect is technical: Russia must submit its ratification documents to the United Nations; 90 days after that, the treaty's provisions become binding.
The Kremlin announced that Mr. Putin had signed by issuing a brief statement early Friday morning with no fanfare.
The statement echoed the main arguments against the treaty, saying it would have "serious consequences" for Russia's "social and economic development." But it also noted the country's decisive position in determining the fate of the treaty.
"The decision on ratification was passed taking into account the significance of the protocol for the development of international cooperation and, likewise, taking into account the protocol will take effect only under the condition of the Russian Federation's participation in it," the statement read.
-------- health
Montreal Hospitals Hit by Deadly Epidemic
Bacterial Infection Spread Quickly Throughout Quebec
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 6, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29159-2004Nov5?language=printer
MONTREAL -- The warning signs were faint, and scattered. Something had happened in Pittsburgh in 2000. Something again in Maine in 2001, and then in New Jersey: increased cases of hospital infection. At his offices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Clifford McDonald pondered the dry jargon of epidemiological reports. Was there a pattern?
Something is now happening in Montreal. This year, a lawyer, Jean-Pierre Menard, noticed a surge in calls from clients whose loved ones had died of infection while in the hospital. For Menard, who specializes in medical malpractice, these were frustrating cases. Responsibility is always hard to prove, an infection hard to trace. But was there a pattern?
The two men in different spots of the continent were among the first to recognize what would soon become a full-blown epidemic, centered in Montreal, a strain of bacterial infection in hospitals that officials believe is particularly dangerous to vulnerable patients.
In the first six months of this year, Clostridium difficile enterocolitis or C. difficile killed 109 patients in 10 hospitals in Quebec and was an accomplice in 108 other deaths, according to conclusions announced two weeks ago by health experts in Montreal.
Officials are unsure exactly how the infection is spreading between hospitals and why it seems to be so deadly, although they have some theories. Public health officials call the deaths alarming. The Quebec health minister labeled the infection a "scourge." McDonald, an infectious disease specialist at the CDC, expects it will spread to other hospitals in North America.
"Based on the experience in Canada, it's a killer. And I think we'll see it more," he said.
For Linda Lanthier, the warnings come too late. Her mother, Lise Langlois, 56, was hospitalized in Montreal in August for a blocked intestine. The surgery went well. Her mother was strong, recovering quickly and happily receiving visitors, Lanthier said.
A few days later, at 4 a.m., Lanthier said she received a call from her mother: "Linda, come. I'm so sick," the woman said. Lanthier rushed to the hospital and found her mother in a room fouled with diarrhea. Lanthier, a dietician at another hospital, said she recognized the symptoms right away: it was C. difficile. Within 48 hours Langlois was in septic shock and her organs were shutting down. In another 24 hours, she was dead.
"It happened so suddenly. I knew people died from this bacteria, but they were elderly. My mother was not elderly. She was strong, still working," Lanthier said. "You go into the hospital for one reason and die of something else. It's scary."
The bacterium has been known for decades to haunt hospitals, officials say. It is typically a threat to patients in hospitals and nursing homes who are receiving strong antibiotics. The antibiotics kill the natural bacteria in the bowels that, in healthy people, easily counteract the toxins of C. difficile. Without that natural defense, C. difficile can explode in the body and eventually overwhelm it.
Typically, the rate of C. difficile infection is low, and few die of its complications. But in an urgent report issued last month, an infection control specialist, Vivian Loo, found twice the normal rate of infection in hospitals in Quebec this year. And death rates rose to nearly 8 percent from the past rate of 1 percent to 2 percent, she reported.
In the first six months of 2004, the bacterium killed as many people in Quebec hospitals as had died from it throughout Canada in the three previous years, her report concluded.
"The incidence and the mortality have gone up. This is an epidemic," she announced at a news conference Oct. 20.
That set off a round of finger-pointing. The C. difficile bacterium is typically spread by the feces of infected people. Quebec's public health system, made up of older hospitals, has undergone budget cuts and staff reductions, and critics say the hospitals are no longer being kept clean.
"The hospital room was dirty, disgusting," said Sophie Mongeon, 31, a Montreal woman whose father was admitted to a hospital last spring because of kidney complications. "There were bloody cotton balls on the floor. The shower was like a campground shower. And I noticed the hand-washing gel in the room was empty; it was never replaced for days."
Her father, Rejean Mongeon, 55, was a "proud, strong man," a veterinarian who was only recently diagnosed with leukemia, she said. As she sat with her father in a hospital in June while he was undergoing chemotherapy, she recalled seeing a television report about the higher incidence of the bacterium at the hospital.
"Oh, boy, that's encouraging," she said her father remarked sarcastically.
A week later, as he was recovering, he developed severe diarrhea. His conditioned quickly worsened. Before he lapsed into a coma, a physician said he was in septic shock, Sophie Mongeon said, and as a veterinarian, he knew that was fatal.
"No one ever told us what was going on," she said. "If we had known about this infection, we would have moved my father. We would have made sure everyone wore gloves and the place was cleaned."
Some experts say hospital staff members who do not wash their hands after dealing with every patient and physicians who over-prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics are responsible for the epidemic by creating opportunities for C. difficile to grow. Those problems are not confined to Quebec, they say.
Issa Ephtimios, an infectious disease specialist in Toronto, said he quit working at a hospital there after the hospital director ignored his warnings last year that physicians were "giving out antibiotics like candy," which would allow C. difficile to flourish. At least three patients died.
"Those deaths were needless. I truly believe this was physician induced -- something we have done to our own patients," he said in an interview.
Andrew Simor, an infectious disease specialist at Sunnybrook and Women's College in Toronto, agreed. "There's a substantial amount of inappropriate antibiotic usage going on," he said.
At the CDC, McDonald said problems of hygiene and the overprescribing of antibiotics are compounded by the new virility of this strain of C. difficile, called B-I. He and Loo, the infection control specialist in Montreal, independently examined samples of C. difficile and found that the normal strain had mutated and caused outbreaks in Quebec, probably in Pittsburgh and at six other hospitals elsewhere in the United States in 2000 and 2001.
"This strain has an extra toxin, called a binary toxin, that has in the past only been found in 6 percent of U.S. strains, but it is uniformly present in this one. We think it is more virulent, though we haven't proved it yet," McDonald said. "And it has a mutation in a gene that normally suppresses toxin production."
Those two aberrations may make it resistant to some of the antibiotics often used in hospitals, and make it more lethal, he said. McDonald suspects this superbug is present but still unnoticed at other hospitals.
"Some hospitals don't even know they have a problem. We have been trying to make people look at their rates," he said. The CDC is recommending hospitals with outbreaks require all health care workers wear gloves and gowns, stop using rectal thermometers and other shared equipment, return to washing their hands with water instead of alcohol-based gels, clean infected rooms with diluted bleach, and more closely scrutinize the use of antibiotics.
In Montreal, Menard, the attorney, has campaigned with a group for improvements at public hospitals.
Mongeon said she believed the infection rates ought to be made available to the public, so patients and their families can avoid infected hospitals.
"It's not just about my father," Mongeon said. "A lot of people are getting worse in the hospital. I don't want to see it happen to someone else."
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